Letters from China and Japan

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OTTERS FROM
IMA AND JAPAN

HN DEWEY -
CHIPMAW DEWEY

LETTERS FROM
CHINA AND JAPAN

LETTERS FROM

CHINA AND JAPAN

BY
JOHN DEWEY, Ph.D., LL.D.

PBOFESSOB or PHILOSOPHY IN COLUMBIA UNIVEBSITT
AND

ALICE CHIPMAN DEWEY

Edited by
EVELYN DEWEY

NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY

681 FIFTH AVENUE

Copyright, 1920,
By E. P. BUTTON & COMPANY

All Riffhtt Reterted

Printtd in tht United States cf Amtrica

PREFACE

John Dewey, Professor of Philosophy in
Columbia University, and his wife, Alice C.
Dewey, who wrote the letters reproduced in
this book, left the United States early in
1919 for a trip to Japan. The trip was
eagerly embarked on, as they had desired
for many years to see at least something of
the Eastern Hemisphere. The journey was
to be solely for pleasure, but just before
their departure from San Francisco, Pro-
fessor Dewey was invited, by cable, to lec-
ture at the Imperial University at Tokyo,
and later at a number of other points in the
Japanese Empire. They traveled and
visited in Japan for some three to four
months and in May, after a most happy ex-
perience, made doubly so, by the unexpected
courtesies extended them, they decided to
go on to China, at least for a few weeks,
before returning to the United States.

vi PREFACE

The fascination of the struggle going on
in China for a unified and independent
democracy caused them to alter their plan
to return to the United States in the sum-
mer of 1919. Professor Dewey applied to
Columbia University for a year's leave of
absence, which was granted, and with Mrs.
Dewey, is still in China. Both are lecturing
and conferring, endeavoring to take some
of the story of a Western Democracy to an
Ancient Empire, and in turn are enjoying
an experience, which, as the letters indicate,
they value as a great enrichment of their
own lives. The letters were written to their
children in America, without thought of
their ever appearing in print.

EVELYN DEWEY.

NEW YORK,
January 5th, 1920.

LETTERS FROM
CHINA AND JAPAN

LETTERS
FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

TOKYO, Monday, February.

Well, if you want to see one mammoth,
muddy masquerade just see Tokyo to-day.
I am so amused all the time that if I were
to do just as I feel, I should sit down or
stand up and call out, as it were, from
the housetops to every one in the world to
come and see the show. If it were not for
the cut of them I should think that all the
cast-off clothing had been misdirected and
had gone to Japan instead of Belgium.
But they are mostly as queer in cut as they
are in material. Imagine rummaging your
attic for the colors and patterns of past

2 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

days and then gathering up kimonos of all
the different colors and patterns and sizes
and with it all a lot of men's hats that are
like nothing you ever saw, and very muddy
streets, and there you have it. The 'rick-
sha men have their legs fitted with tight
trousers and puttees to end them, and they
are graceful. They run all day through
the mud and snow and wet in these things
made of cotton cloth that are neither stock-
ings nor shoes but both, and they stand
about or sit on steps and wait, and yet they
get through the day alive. I am distracted
between the desire to ride in the baby cart
and the fear of the language, mixed with
the greater fear of the pain of being drawn
by a fellow-being. They are a lithe set of
little men and look as if they had steel
springs to make them go when you look at
their course. Still I have been only in
autos, of which there are not many here. I
get tired with the excitement of the con-
stant amusement. This morning a man

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 3

came out of a curio shop. Bow. "Ex-
guse me, madame, is this not Mrs. Daway?
I knew you because I saw your picture in
the paper. Will you not come in and look
at our many curios? I shall have the
pleasure of bringing them to your hotel.
What is the number of your room,
madame?" Bow. "No, please doinot bring
them to my room, for I am always out. I
will come in an9 see them sometime."
"Thank you, madame, please do so,
madame, we have many fine curios." Bow.
"Good-morning, madame."

The looks of the streets are like the
clothes, just left over from the past ages.
Of course Tokyo is the modern city of
Japan, and we shall watch out for the an-
cient ones when it comes their turn. I wish
I could give you an idea of the looks of
the poor. The children up to the age of
about thirteen appear never to wipe their
noses. Combine this effect (more effect
than in Italy) with several kimonos, one on

4 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

top of the other, made of cotton and wool
of bright colors and flowered, with a queer
brown checked one on top; this wadded and
much too big, therefore hitched up round
the waist. Swung in this outside one a baby
is carried on the back, the little baby head
with black bangs or still fuzzy scalp stick-
ing out, nose never yet touched by a hand-
kerchief, wearer of the baby with a nose
in the same condition if at a tender age —
I scream inside of me as I go about,
and it is more exciting than any play ever.
We are as much curiosities to them as they
are to us, though we live where the most
foreigners go. Now on top of it all we can
no more make a car driver understand
where we want to go than if we were
monkeys; We can't find any names on the
streets, we can't read a sign except the few
that are in English; the streets wind in any
and every direction ; they are long and short
and circular, while a big canal circles
through the part of the city where we are

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 5

and we seem to cross it every few minutes;
every time we cross it we think we are going
in the same direction as the last time we
crossed it. About this stage of our search
your father goes up to a young fellow with
an ulster on, and capes, and a felt hat that
is like a fedora except for a few inches taken
out of its height, and says to him, Tei-ko-ku
Hotel, which would mean the Imperial
Hotel if he had pronounced it right, and the
boy turns around and says, "Do you want
ee Imperialee Hoter?" And we say, "Yes"
(you bet), and the fellow says, "Eet is ze
teeg building down zere," so we wade
along some more with all the clog walkers
looking at our feet till we come to this old
barn of a place where we are paying as
much as at a Fifth Avenue hotel, and get
clear soup for dinner. Just like any one
of those old-fashioned French places where
they measure out with care all they give you,
and where the head is a most distinguished
and conspicuous jack-in-the-box who jacks

6 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

at you all the time, bows every time you
go down the hall and all and all and all.
It is all so screamingly funny. The shops
are nearly as big as our bedrooms at home
with enough space to step in and leave your
shoes before you mount the takenomo and
walk on the mats. We could not go into
any shop, except the foreign book stores,
because we were too dirty and had no time
to unlace our shoes even if we wanted to
wear out our silk stockings. We shall have
some nice striped socks before we begin to
do shopping. I am possessed with the no-
tion of trying the clogs.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 7

Tuesday, February 11 ( TOKYO).

To-day is a holiday, so we cannot go to the
bank, but we can go to a meeting where
they will discuss universal franchise and de-
mocratization generally. The Emperor is
said to be indisposed, so he will not come
to the celebration. His illnesses, like every-
thing else about him, are arranged by the
ministers and mistresses, as near as we can
make out.

We are having so many interesting ex-
periences and impressions that it is already
difficult to catch up in writing them down.
Yesterday morning we went to walk and
in the afternoon we were taken out in a
car so that we have got over the first im-
pression of the surface. We saw the uni-
versity and the park where the tombs of the
shoguns are, and those tombs are wonder-
ful, jusii to look at from the car. About

8 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

to-morrow we may be able to go to the
museum. The rows of stone lanterns are
impressive beyond anything I had imagined;
hundreds of them which must have given to
the nights they illuminated a wonderfully
weird spectral look.

It is not fully true that the Japanese are
not interested in their history. At least the
educated are, as in any other country. A
friend told us about the revival of interest
in the tea ceremony. He is going to ar-
range for us to go to one somewhere, he did
not say where, but it will be accompanied
by a grand dinner and will express the
magnificence of the new rich as well as the
taste of old Japan, to judge from the im-
pressions he gave us. He told us of an old
Chinese cup for the tea ceremony that a
certain millionaire has recently paid 160,000
yen for. That means $80,000. He says the
collectors have various sets, and each set
will often represent a million dollars. This
particular bowl is of black porcelain with

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 9

decorations of bright color. He told us also
of a tea which is now produced in China by
grafting the tea branches on to lemon trees.
He has some of this tea which was given
him by the Chinese ambassador and so I
hope we may get a taste of it.

Apropos of this hotel you will be inter-
ested to know the manager who runs the
house has just come home from the Wal-
dorf and from London where he has been
learning how to do — people. The exchange
rates they offered Papa seem to be an
index of their line of development and they
are going to build more. This is the one
first-class hotel in Japan. At present they
have only about sixty rooms or a little more.

In general, things are coming along
promisingly. I should be through lecturing
by the first of April here, which is just the
time to begin traveling. It turns out a good
scheme to come in winter, for the weather,
while not cheerful, is far from really cold,
though it is not easy to see just how the

10 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

palms thrive in the snow. Japan seems to
have developed a peculiar type of semi-
tropical vegetation which endures freezing
and winter. I can foresee that we are go-
ing to be busy enough, and for the next few
weeks your mother is going to have more
time for miscellaneous sight-seeing than I.
It is indescribably fascinating; in substance,
of course, like the books and pictures, but
nothing really prepares you for the fact that
it is not only real in quality but on such a
vast scale — not just specimens here and
there.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 11

TOKYO, Thursday, February 13.

We have done our first independent shop-
ping to-day. I can't get over my astonish-
ment at the amount and quality of English
spoken here; it is about as easy shopping in
this store, the big department store, as it is
at home — much easier as respects attention
and comfort. They give us little wrappers
or feet gloves to put over our shoes. Think
of what an improvement that would be in
muddy weather in Chicago.

This afternoon is sort of a lull after the
storm of sociability and hospitality which
reached its temporary height yesterday.
Let me give the diary. Before we had
finished breakfast — and we have eaten every
morning at eight until to-day — people be-
gan to call. Then two gentlemen took us
to the University in their car and we called
on the President again. He is a gentleman

12 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

of the old school, Confucianist I suppose,
and your mother was much impressed at
being taken in, instead of staying in the car,
but I think he was much more pleased and
complimented by her call than by mine.
Then we were taken to the department
store to which I have already alluded.
Many people do all their buying there, be-
cause there are fixed prices with a reward
for a discovery of any place where the
same goods are sold cheaper, and abso-
lute honesty as to quality. But they also
said that was the easy way to visit Japan
and learn about the clothes, ornaments,
toys, etc., and also to see the people, as
the Japanese from all over the country
come there to see the sights. There were
a group of country people in; they are
called red blankets, not greenhorns, because
they wear in winter a red bed blanket
gathered with a string, instead of an over-
coat. Then at night it comes in handy.
The stores are already displaying IKe

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 13

things for the girls' festival though it
doesn't come till early March — this is the
peach fete, and the display of festive dolls
— king and queen, servants, ladies of the
court in their old costumes, is very interest-
ing and artistic. They have certainly put
the doll to uses which we haven't ap-
proached. Then we had lunch at the store,
a regular Japanese lunch, which tasted very
good, and I ate mine with chop sticks. Then
they brought us back to the hotel, and at
two a friend came and took me to call on
Baron Shibusawa — I suppose even be-
nighted foreigners like yourself will know
who he is, but you may not know that he is
83, that he has a skin like a baby's, and
shows all the signs of the most acute mental
vigor, or that for the last two or three years
he has given up all business and devoted
himself to philanthropic and humanitarian
activities. He does evidently what not
many American millionaires do ; he takes an
intellectual and moral interest, and doesn't

14 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

merely give money. He explained for
about half an hour or more his theory of
life (he is purely a Confucianist and not a
religionist of any kind), and what he was
trying to do, especially that it isn't merely
relief. He is desirous to preserve the old
Confucian standards only adapted to pres-
ent economic conditions; it is essentially a
morality of feudal economic relationships,
as perhaps you know, and he thinks the
modern factory employers can be brought
to take the old paternal attitude to the em-
ployees and thus forestall the class struggle
here. The radicals laugh at the notion here
much as they would in the United States,
but for my part if he can get in a swipe
at the Marxian theory of social evolution
and bring about another type still of social
evolution, I don't see why he should not
have a run for his money. According to
all reports there is very little labor and
capital problem here yet, though the big for-
tunes made by the war and the increased

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 15

prosperity of the workingmen have begun
to make a change, it is said. Up to the
present labor unions have not been permit-
ted, but the government has announced that
while they are not encouraged they will not
be any longer forbidden.

But I must get back to the story. An-
other friend had asked us to go to the
theater with him, the Imperial Theater,
which has European seats and is a fine and
large building, as fine as in any capital and
not overdecorated like a New York one.
The theater began at four, and, with about
half an hour intermission for dinner, con-
tinued till ten at night ; the regular Japanese
theaters begin at eleven in the morning and
continue till ten at night and you have your
food brought to you; also they have no seats
and you sit on your legs. None of the
plays was strictly of the old historic type,
but the most interesting one by far was
adapted from a classic — it centers to some
extent about a faithful horse, and the

16 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

people are country farmers of several cen-
turies ago. The least interesting was a kind
of problem play — mostly philosophical dis-
course of the modern type — the right to ex-
pression of self and an artistic career,
aphorisms having no dramatic appeal to
even the Japanese audience. These people
certainly have an alert intelligence — almost
as specialized as the Parisian, for the audi-
ence was distinctly of the people, and no
American audience could be got to pay the
close attention it gave to performances
where the merits, so far as they are not
strictly artistic, in the technique of acting
which is very highly developed, depend
upon catching the play of moral emotions
rather than upon anything very theatrical.
However, the classic drama which is based
upon old stories and traditions is more
dramatic and melodramatic. The Japanese
also say the old theater has much better
actors than the semi-Europeanized one
which is, I suppose, supported by the gov-

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 17

eminent. In the Imperial, the orchestra
seats are one dollar and a half; they are
more — on the floor at that — in the all-day
theaters. Even in this one they have not
introduced applause, though there was
slight handclapping once or twice when the
curtain went down. The Japanese have al-
ways had the revolving theater as a means
of scene shifting; it works like a railway
turntable apparently. Well, that ended the
day yesterday. Except we had invited two
gentlemen to dinner, and when we told our
friends about it, they said, "Oh, just tele-
phone them to come some other day," which
appears to be good Japanese etiquette, as
it is also to make calls at any time of the
day, so we did. But unfortunately they
had to telephone to-day that they couldn't
come to-night.

To-day has been comparatively calm; we
have only had four Japanese callers and
two American ones. Of the two Japanese,
one is a woman who is the warden of the

18 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

Girls' University, and the other is a teacher
in it, a young woman of a wealthy and aris-
tocratic family who has become too modern,
I judge, for her family. I hope all you
children will make a bow to every Japanese
you meet and ask him what you can do to
be of service to him. I shall have to spend
the rest of my life trying to make up for
some of the kindnesses and courtesies which
so abound here.

I am afraid much of this is more inter-
esting to me to write about than it is to you
to read, to say nothing of being more in-
teresting to go through than to read about.
But you can then save the letter for us to
re-read when we get old and return from
our Odysseying, and wish to recover the
memories of the days when people were so
kind that they created in us the illusion of
being somebody, and gave us the combined
enjoyments of home and being in a strange
and semi-magic country; semi-magic for us.
For the mass of the people, one can only

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 19

wonder at their cheerfulness and realize
what a really old and overcrowded country
is and how Buddhism and stoic fatalistic
cheerfulness develop. Don't ever fool your-
self into thinking of Japan as a new coun-
try; I don't any longer believe the people
who tell you that you have to go to China
and India to see antiquity. Superficially
it may be so, but not fundamentally. Any
country is old where birth and death are
like the coming and dropping of leaves on
a tree, and where the individual is of as
much importance as the leaf. Old world
and New world are not mere relatives; they
are as near absolutes as anything.

We heard a whistle making its cry outside
and Mamma thought it was the bank mes-
senger, so I rang the bell for the boy to
bring him in — but alas, it was much less
romantic; it was the call of the macaroni
peddler.

20 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

TOKYO, February.

Here we are, one week after landing, on
a hill in a beautiful garden of trees on
which the buds are already swelling. The
plums will soon be in bloom, and in March
the camellias, which grow to fairly large
trees. In the distance we see the wonderful
Fuji, nearby the other hills of this district,
and the further plains of the city. Just
at the foot of our hill is a canal, along
which is an alley of cherry trees formerly
famous, but largely destroyed by a storm a
few years ago.

We have a wonderful apartment to our-
selves, mostly all windows, which in this
house are glass. A very large bedroom, a
small dressing room, and a study where I
now sit with the sun coming in the windows
which are all its sides. We need this sun,
though the hibashi, or boxes of charcoal,

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 21

do wonders in warming up your feet and
drying hair, as I am now doing. We are
surrounded by all the books on Japan that
modern learning has produced, so we have
never a waiting moment. The house is very
large, with one house after another covering
the hilltop and connected by the galleries
that are cut off the sides of each room in
succession. I shall try to get a photo. At

the extreme end of the house is Mr. X 's

library of several rooms, and at the limit of
that the tea room for the tea ceremonies.
Our host is not one of the new rich who
buy sets at a million dollars for performing
this ceremony. He laughs at that. But
there is a gold lacquer table which is like
transfixed sunshine, and there are other
pieces of old furniture, which are priceless
now, and which have come down in his
family. You would be amused to see us at
breakfast, which O-Tei, the maid assigned
to us, serves in our sun parlor. First we
have fruit. Two little lacquer tables to

22 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

move wherever we want to sit. The dishes
and service are in our fashion in this house.
Nice old blue Canton plates and other things
Japanese. After fruit she makes toast over
the charcoal in the hibashi, two little iron
sticks stuck in the bread to hold it. On
these prongs she hands us the toast. Mean-
time she teaches us Japanese and we teach
her English which she already knows, and
she giggles every time we speak. Well,
we put our toast down on the plate and
she disappears. The coffee pot is on a side
table and we desperately look for cups for
ourselves, though with some fear of disturb-
ing the etiquette. No cups, she forgot them.
After a while she comes up again with the
cups and we get coffee, then she goes down
again and brings scrambled eggs on the nice
old blue plates. Then she giggles a little
more and talks in that soft voice that is
like nothing else we ever heard, as she
hands us a nice hot piece of toast on an
iron spike; she is much pleased and giggles

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 23

because I tell her the toast is not harmed by
dropping it on the clean floor, and she walks
off into the big bedroom to bring the coffee
from the gas heater. It is all like a pretty
play unmarred by any remote ideas about
efficiency, and time and labor-saving de-
vices. Then two maids make our beds ; then
they dust the floor, one holding up the sofa
on edge while the other whisks underneath
it, and they smile and bow and take an in-
terest in every move we make as if we were
their dearest friends.

Enter now the housekeeper who, with
many bows, announces v-e-r-y s-1-o-w-l-y
that she would like to accompany me to go
about the city and to explain things to me,
as I would thus teach her English. I asked
if she were going to church and she said she
wasn't a Christian. Think what a funny
sound that has. She is the secretary of Mr.

X and a student in the new Christian

college of which he is the President. She
comes in now to wait on us at breakfast and

24 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

she stays and repeats English after us. She
knows a lot of English, but it is so literary
that it is quite amusing to turn her into the
ways of ordinary talk. To get her to open
her mouth and break the polite Japanese
whisper, in which the Japanese women
speak, is what I work most on. Yesterday
we visited the Women's University which is
within walking distance of this house. The
President, Mr. Naruse, is dying of cancer.
He is in bed but is able to talk quite
naturally. He has made a farewell address
to his students, has said good-bye to his
faculty in a speech, and has named the dean,
who is acting in his place now, as his suc-
cessor. At this University they teach
flower arrangement, long sword, and Jap-
anese etiquette, and the chief warden is a
fine woman. She says I may come in as
much as I like to see those different things.
In the afternoon we had callers again,
among them two women. Women are
rare. One, a Dr. R , is an osteopath who

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 25

has practiced here for fifteen years and is
an old friend of our host's. The second,

Miss T , has just returned from seven

years in our country. I heard much of her at
Stanford and brought letters to her. She
has a chair in the Women's University. It
is a chair of Sociology, but she says the
authorities are afraid the time has not yet
come for her to start on sociology, so she
will begin with the teaching of English and
work into sociology by the process of in-
gratiating it into her classes. She is an in-
teresting personality. She was sent to me
to say I might be lonely because your
father was away so she was to take me,
with any other friends I wanted, to the
theater. As we had already been to the
Imperial Theater and sat in the Baron's box
it was finally arranged to go to the Kabuki,
where we sit on the floor and see real old
Japanese acting, which I am very anxious
to do. I understand it begins at 11 in the
morning and lasts until ten at night.

26 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

February 22.

Yesterday we went to the theater, be-
ginning at one and ending about nine; tea
is constantly in the box, and little meals —
and a big one — between the acts. We liked
the old Japanese theater better than the
more or less modernized one. Baron Shi-
busawa presented us with a box — or rather
two of them — and his niece and another
relative and the two young people from the
house went. I won't try to describe the
dramas, except to say that the way to study
Japanese history and tradition would be to
go to the theater with some one to interpret,
and that while the theater is as plain as a
medieval European one, the dresses are even
more elaborate and costly. The stage is a
beautiful spectacle when there are forty
old Samurai on it, as the garments are gen-
uine, not tinsel. Mamma went more than

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 27

I, because I had to leave at half-past
four to go to the Concordia Society — in
fact, I hadn't expected to go at all at first,
as the Baron said that he sent the offer of
the box because he feared Mamma might
be lonely when I was away! There were
about twenty-five Japanese and Americans
at the meeting and after I had spoken for
half an hour we had dinner in an adjoin-
ing restaurant, and then sat around and
visited for an hour or so.

The great event of the week, aside from
the theater yesterday, was visiting the
Women's University — you mightn't think
that a great treat, but you don't know what
we saw. We started early to walk, since it
isn't far and we had been shown the way
once, but we were rubbering so busily at the
shops that we failed to notice where we
were till we got to the end of things and
then had to turn around and walk back, so
we got there late. The forenoon we spent
in the elementary classes and kindergarten,

28 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

which are their practice school. Those very
bright kimonos for children you see are real
— all the children wear them, as bright as
can be, generally reds, and then some. So
the rooms where the little children were are
like gardens of flowers with bright birds in
them — gay as can be. The work was all
interesting, but the colored crayon draw-
ings particularly. They have a great deal
of freedom there, and instead of the chil-
dren imitating and showing no individuality
—which seems to be the proper thing to
say — I never saw so much variety and so
little similarity in drawings and other hand
work, to say nothing of its quality being
much better than the average of ours. The
children were under no visible discipline,
but were good as well as happy; they paid
no attention to visitors, which I think is
ultramodern, as I expected to see them all
rise and bow. If you will think of doing
all the regular school work — including in
this school a good deal of hand work, draw-*

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 29

ing, etc. — and then learning by the end of
the sixth grade a thousand or more Chinese
characters, to make as well as to read, you
will have some idea of how industrious the
kids have to be, and of course they have to
learn Japanese characters, too. Then we
had a luncheon, ten of us altogether, cooked
and served by the girls in the Domestic De-
partment; some luncheon! — and garnished
in a way to beat the Ritz — European food
and service. Then the real show began.
First we had flower arrangement, ancient
and modern styles, then examples of the
ancient etiquette in serving tea and cakes to
guests, and then of inferiors calling on
superiors; then Koto playing — a thirteen-
stringed harp that lies on the floor — first two
girls and the teacher, and then a solo by
the teacher. He is blind and said to be the
best player in Japan; he gave "Cotton
Bleaching in the Brook," and said he rarely
played it, only once a year. Well, you
could hear the water ripple and fall, and hit

30 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

the stones, and the women singing and beat-
ing the cotton. I could hear it better than
I can hear spring in our music, so I
think perhaps my ears are made to fit the
Japanese scale, or lack of it. Then we were
taken into the tea house and shown the tea
ceremony, being served with tea. Mamma
sat tatami, on her heels, but I basely took
a chair. Then we went to the gymnasium
and saw the old Samurai women's sword
and spear exercises, etc. The teacher was
an old woman of seventy-five and as lithe
and nimble as a cat — more graceful than
any of the girls. I have an enormous re-
spect now for the old etiquette and cere-
monies regarded as physical culture. Every
movement has to be made perfectly, and it
cannot be done without conscious control.
The modernized gym exercises by the chil-
dren were simply pitiful compared with all
these ceremonies. Then we were taken to
the dormitories, which are in a garden,
simple wooden Japanese buildings, like

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 31

barns our girls would think, but everything
$o clean you could eat on the floor any-
where, with the south side all glass and sun,
and the girls sitting on the floor to study on
a table about a foot and a half high; no beds
or chairs to litter up the rooms. Then
after we were taken over some of the other
rooms, we went back to the dining-room
and had a most exquisite Japanese vege-
tarian Buddhist lunch served — just a
sample, all on a little plate, but including
the sweets for dessert, five or six things all
quite different and elegantly cooked. Also
three kinds of tea.

Politeness is so universal here that when
we get back we shall either be so civil that
you won't know us, or else we shall be so
irritated that nobody is sufficiently civil that
you won't know us either. Mr. X— - took me
in his car and brought me back. When we
got to the hall there were five maids bowing
and smiling to get our slippers and hang
up our coats and hats. Just going in or

32 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

out is like going to a picnic; I think the
maids enjoy this change in their regular
work, for they really smile, as if they were
having the time of their lives. If it is per-
functory and put on, they have me fooled.
Well, I'll spare you all any philosophical
reflections this trip. Besides, I've been too
busy having a good time to think of any.
They will probably grow spontaneously in
China. I forgot whether I told you in my
last letter that the Minister of the Interior
has given me a monthly and renewable pass
first class on the Japanese railways. A
friend here asked him for one for Mamma,
too, but he said he was very sorry, that privi-
lege could not be extended to a woman. So
I'm the only grafter in the family. I
haven't had a chance to use it yet, but shall
make one at the first opportunity in order
to get the sensation.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 83

TOKYO, Friday, February 28.

I don't get much sightseeing done except
in the way of seeing street sights. I am
generally accompanied when I take a walk
for exercise and always taken by some new
way. The other evening we went out after
dinner and took a walk to a lively street
not far off — booksellers with their things
spread out on the sidewalk or rather road,
little lunch wagons, crowded streets and
shops — they have electricity everywhere,
and some geisha girls trotting along with
maids to carry their samisens. We went
into a Japanese movie beside rubbering at
everything and then went into a Japanese
restaurant. Their eating places here are
specialized — this was a noodle shop, and we
tried three kinds, one wheat in a soup, one
buckwheat with fried shrimps, and another
cold with seaweed. For the entire lot for
the two of us it cost 27 cents American

34 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

money, and the place, which was an ordinary
one, was cleaner than any American one,
even the best. The movie story seemed
more complicated than any of ours, and was
certainly slower, because there is a man and
a woman in a little coop near the curtain
who say what the actors are saying when-
ever their lips move, this gives a chance of
course for more talk. There were a few
knockouts and a murder and a villain and
a persecuted damsel, and an attempted sui-
cide to provide thrills, but I couldn't make
out what it was about even with the aid of
the guide with me. Such are simple pleas-
ures here, save that when we walk in the
daytime we generally go to a temple where
on the whole the people are more interest-
ing than the temples, though sometimes the
layout of trees is beautiful and gives much
the same effect of religious calm as a cathe-
dral. In general the similarity between
worship here and the country Italian
Catholicism is more striking than anything

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 35

else. They are slightly more naive here —
to see the dolls, woolly dogs, and pinwheels
at the shrines of the children's gods, besides
their straw slippers, straw sandals and an
occasional child's kimono is quite touching,
also sometimes a mother has cut off her hair
and pinned it up as an offering. Other
things are as humorous as these are pathetic,
such as making spitballs of written prayers
and pasting the god with them. Some of
the gods are now protected by wire netting
on this account. I have got fairly well used
to the street scenes now and can tell most
of the kinds of shops, such as an under-
taker's from a cooper's. What makes the
street so interesting is that you can look in
and see everything going on. I forgot to
mention the most interesting street thing
I've seen, a bird catcher with a long limed
pole like a bamboo fishing rod, a basket
with a valve door to put them in and some
other utensils. I didn't see him catch any,
though.

36 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

Sunday Morning, March 2.

I am writing early because we are going
to-day to Kamakura. You have probably
heard of the big bronze Buddha — fifty feet
high — well, that is there. A friend has ar-
ranged an interview for us with the most
distinguished or most learned of the Bud-
dhist priests in Japan — who belongs to the
most philosophical of all the sects, the Zen,
which believes in the simple life and is more
or less Stoical; this is the sect that had the
greatest influence on the warrior class in the
good old days. Kamakura is on the other
side of Yokohama, an old Shogun capital;
has lots of historic shrines, etc.

Yesterday I made my first speech with
an interpreter to a teachers' association,
some five hundred in all, mostly elementary
school teachers conspicuous for the fact that
only about twenty-five were women. In the

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 37

evening we went to a supper and reception
of the English- Speaking Society, Americans
and Japanese, mostly the latter; both men
and women and the most generally sociable
thing we have seen yet. We have heard said
it was the only place in Tokyo where Japan-
ese men and women really met in a free
sociable way, and the president said that
when Japanese met for sociable purposes
they were reserved and stiff — at least till the
wine went round — as long as they spoke
Japanese, but speaking English brought
back the habits they got in America and
thawed them out — an interesting psycho-
logical observation on the effect of language.

38 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

TOKYO, Tuesday, March 4.

You would be surprised to see how free
from all affectations this country has re-
mained, at least so far as we see it. There
is a social democracy here that we do not
know. All Japan is talking democracy now,
which is to be taken in the sense of repre-
sentative government rather than in the
sense of tearing down the present form of
government. The representation in elec-
tions here now does not seem to extend much
further, if any, than to include those large
taxpayers who would under any system be
a force in forming policy. The extension
of the suffrage is the great question under
discussion at present. That and the expan-
sion of special education for men are the
turning points for the coming legislators.
Japan has acquired many new millionaires
during the war and those men are already

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 39

founding new schools for vocational pur-
poses for men. Four hundred and forty stu-
dents are to be sent abroad with a very gen-
erous allowance for living in the different
foreign countries, none of them women, and
no women are mentioned in any of the new
appropriation bills. Not even a mention of
the needs for women.

Yesterday, to begin, was spent thus: It
was the famous festival of dolls. In the
morning I made a dress for a poor sort of
foreign doll I had hunted out for a little girl.
It was all American. Another ridiculous
imitation of American baby, looking half
caste Japanese, has still to be dressed when
I can find the material for long clothes, but
I presented it as is. They invited me in to
see their exhibition. Some of their dolls are
two hundred years old from their mothers'
family. I shall try to find some literature
on this festival as it is too long to write
about. But it is true that one begins imme-
diately to get the passion for dolls; they are

40 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

not dead things like ours, but works of art
symbolic of all the different phases of na-
tional life. The little girls were delighted
with their possessions. If I had only known
about this I should have known what to
bring to Japan for gifts, instead of feeling
as helpless as I did. If you come, bring
dolls.

In the afternoon I was invited to go to
the best or one of the best collections in the
country and that was a great experience. It
began very painfully for me because I got
lost and was three-quarters of an hour late
at the Imperial Hotel from which we
started. The family that owns this famous
collection is very old and the wife is the
daughter of a Daimyo, hence the dolls are
very old. And they are wonderful, and
more wonderful still their housekeeping
equipment of old lacquer and porcelain and
glass. The doll refreshments are served in
tiny dishes on tiny tables while the guests
sit on the floor, the hostess and her family

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 41

doing all the serving. We had the thick
white wine made from rice poured out of
wonderful little decanters into tiny glasses.
We drank to the health of the family and
the stuff is delicious, with an aroma such as
no honey can excel. After these refresh-
ments we were shown the room for the tea
ceremony and then taken back into the for-
eign part of the house for real refreshments,
which consisted of many and .wonderful va-
rieties of cakes. The tea was served in cups
with saucers decorated with plum blossoms,
this being the time of plum blossoms. Then
tea cups taken away and cups of rich choco-
late placed on the tables. These tables were
high enough for the ordinary chairs. All
the foreign houses are very -ugly in style but
very comfortable and mid* Victorian. The
Baroness urged us to eat special cakes and
we left stuffed. One kind is nuthe form of
a beautiful pink leaf wrapped in a cherry
leaf which has been preserved from last year.
The leaf gives -the cake a delicious flavor

42 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

and also a cover to protect the fingers from
its stickiness. Then three little round brown
cakes looking some like chocolate — on a
skewer. You bite off the first one whole,
then slip the other two as you eat them.
Those alone are enough for a meal and very
nourishing. All cakes are made from bean
paste or like our richest pastries. When
that second meal was finished, we said good-
bye. The Baroness and her three pretty
daughters and her sister all followd us to
the outer door and when our auto drove off
the last thing we saw were the bows of the
butlers and these pretty ladies, all saying
one more harmonious good-bye. The
young girls dress in kimonos of wool muslin
of the brightest colors and designs which are
conceivable even to the Japanese imagina-
tion. They look like a very profusely bloom-
ing garden of old fashioned perennials.

The garden is indescribable. I had some
fancy of what a Japanese garden would look
like, but find it is nothing at all beside the

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 43

reality. This place is big and the grass is
now brown. Most of the grass is covered
with a thick carpet of pine needles and at
the edge of the pine needle carpet a rope of
twisted straw outlines graceful curves. The
use of the big stones is the most surprising
part of the whole. They are very old and
weather-stained, of many shades of gray and
blue-gray, with the short shrubs for a back-
ground, and the severity and simplicity of
the result has a classic beauty which we may
attain in centuries, and only after we have
consumed our abundance of things material.
Then we went to dinner at the house of
Profssor M— — . There are six children in
his family, the oldest a man of about twenty-
five, a graduate of the Imperial University,
now a factory inspector for the government ;
he speaks eight languages. One of these is
Esperanto, which is his hobby. The French
Professors were there also, two of them, a
clever and amusing pair, who did their duty
in talking, and the young man spoke better

44 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

than any of us and with an excellent pronun-
ciation. He has never been out of Japan.
Two little girls and a young boy appeared
after dinner and made their pretty bows to
the floor, and then went to a low table and
squatted and played Go the rest of the
evening. Go is the famous shell game. Go
means five and it is a game of fives, but ask
me no more, except that the men are 364 in
number and you play it on an expanded
checker board. There was an endless suc-
cession of food and drinks and we did not
leave till nearly eleven. Japanese families
have many nice drinks which we do not.
Theirs are perhaps no better than our best
ones, but they add to the pleasant variety of
non-alcoholic drinks. Besides those we had
two wines.

This was the dinner as near as I can re-
member. A menu card was at each plate
and I fancy they were intended as souvenirs
for the foreign guests, but I forgot to take
mine, if that was their purpose. We had

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 45

soup, bread of two kinds, and butter. Then
fish patties, then little birds, boned, on toast
with a vegetable, then ramekins of Japan-
ese macaroni, which is not like ours. Next
roast beef, very tender fillet, with potato
balls, peas, gravy, another vegetable forgot,
and salad, white and red wine, coming after
the orange cider. Then a delicious pudding,
then cake and strawberries. Those berries
are raised out of doors. They are planted
between rows of stones which are heated ar-
tificially, I did not quite understand how,
the vines being kept from touching the
stones by low bamboo trellises. Whipped
cream served with the berries. Then deli-
cious coffee in foreign style.

After dinner we leave the reception room
in foreign style and go upstairs to the big
Japanese room, sit by the hibashi or the
grate, and here the children come. At once
tea is served. Then just as we were start-
ing for home we were urged to stay for a
drink, which was more orange cider, very

46 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

sweet, and bottled waters, which are so good
and come from the many natural springs.
One of the amusements of the Japanese is
seeing the foreign visitors try to sit, and you
can't wonder they are amused. I can man-
age it, in awkward fashion, but your father
can't even bend for the pose. On Sunday
we sat for two hours in the presence of the
greatest Buddhist priest in Japan, and you
can guess whether we wriggled and if my
feet were asleep if you try the pose for a
few minutes yourself, even on a nice soft
cushion as we were. Getting up properly
is the hardest part of it.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 47

TOKYO, Tuesday, March 4.

Our friends took us to Kamakura; it isn't
interesting reading these things in advance
in guide books, so I don't think a description
will be interesting, but something over seven
hundred years ago, the first Shogun rulers
settled there and made it their capital, of
which nothing is now left save the Buddhist
temples. We met on the train going down
the professor of Japanese literature in the
University, who was going there because it
was the seventh hundred anniversary of a
Shogun who wrote poetry, and the pro-
fessor was going over to lecture on his
poems. Also we ran across several hun-
dred school children, boys and girls with
their teachers, who were spending Sunday
seeing the historic sights. One of the big
temples to the god of war was a kind

48 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

of museum, with old swords and masks
and things in it. They took us to call on
the Reverend Shaku, who is the head of the
Zen sect of Buddhists in Japan, and who
talked — including the interpreter — about
two hours, in answer to questions about
Buddhism, especially his variety. It was
very interesting. We were ushered into a
Japanese room, beautiful proportions, a
lovely kakemono in the alcove — it's a scroll,
not a kimono — and a five-legged little table
made of metal with mother-of-pearl inlay.
Otherwise nothing but the room with gor-
geous blue and gold chrysanthemums alter-
nating on the paneled ceiling and five silk
cushions scattered around for us to sit on,
and a single one at the end of the room for
him. In about five minutes another screen
door opened and he appeared in a gorgeous
but simple flowing robe, copper colored.
Then tea and sponge cake — meantime the
talk fest had begun. Incidentally I should
remark that the bowing and kneeling of the

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 49

servants looks much more natural and less
servile when you see people seated on the
floor, and the servants have to kneel to hand
them anything. His personality is that of a
scholarly type, rather ascetic, not over re-
fined, but not in the least sleek like some of
our Hindu swamis, and very charming.
When we left he thanked us for coming and
expressed his great satisfaction that he had
made some friends. His talk was largely
moral but with a high metaphysical flavor,
somewhat elusive, and reminding one of
Royce. Well it was an experience worth
having, as he is reputed the most learned
and representative Buddhist in Japan, and
as I have remarked before, seeing is quite
different from reading. He was more mod-
ern than Royce in one respect ; he said God
is the moral ideal in man and as man de-
velops the divine principle does also. We
saw the big fifty-foot bronze statue of
Buddha, in some respects the most cele-
brated single thing in Japan and again one

50 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

you have to see. It is as impressive as a
cathedral.

We have been to a dinner party since I
began this. Our host seems to be a universal
genius — a member of the house of peers, an
authority on education, an orchid fancier, a
painter and I don't know what. There were
over twenty at table, and our health was
drunk in champagne with a little speech,
and two members of the cabinet were there.
The Countess is the mother of eight chil-
dren, and looks about thirty and very pretty
for thirty. Three or four of the little girls
were about before and after dinner, and,
like several of the little girls of the new
generation, are as spontaneous and natural
as you would wish. Acquired characteris-
tics are certainly hereditary in Japan, for
even the most lively and spontaneous chil-
dren are civilized. Whatever else you think
about the Japanese they are about the most
highly civilized people on earth, perhaps
overcultivated. I asked Mamma when these

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 51

girls would undergo the clammifying proc-
ess and have all their life taken out of them,
and she said never for these girls.

President Naruse died this morning; as
he had cancer, it was fortunate he did not
linger longer. He was one of the most re-
markable men in Japan. Two days before
he died the Empress sent him a present of
five thousand dollars for his school — a very
great tribute and one which will help the
cause of woman's education. Speaking of
this family where we dined, you can judge
of the high aristocracy of our hosts of the
evening by the fact that when they showed
us the dolls' festival, there were some fine
ones which had been sent the Countess by
the Imperial Princesses. The dolls by the
way are never played with — they are works
of art and history to look at. These children
got out their American dolls, of which they
had ten, to show Mamma.

52 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

March 5.

I have now given three lectures. They
are a patient race ; there is still a good-sized
audience, probably five hundred. We are
gradually getting a superficial acquaintance
with a good many people, and if I could get
two or three weeks free from lectures to pre-
pare I could make a business of finding
things out, but as it is I only accumulate cer-
tain impressions. There is no doubt a great
change is going on; how permanent it will
be depends a good deal upon how the rest
of the world behaves. If it doesn't live up
to its peaceful and democratic professions,
the conservative bureaucrats and militarists,
who of course are still very strong, will say
we told you so and there will be a backset.
But if other countries, and especially our
own, behave decently, the democratizing
here will go on as steadily and as rapidly as
is desirable.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 53

TOKYO, Monday, March 10.

Yesterday we had our first taste of the
Noh drama. We got there before nine in
the morning, and I left before two to go to
Mr. Naruse's funeral, but Mamma stayed
till nearly three when she had to go to speak
at a school. Mamma can give you a much
more intelligent idea of it than I can, but
the building is a kind of barnlike structure
— the Elizabethan theater with a vengeance,
and no stage properties except some little
live pines and a big painted one, and except
costumes which are rich and expensive and
the masks which are likewise. It is an
acquired taste, but one which can be
acquired very rapidly. If they weren't done
with such extraordinary art and technique
they would probably be stupid, to a for-
eigner anyway, but as it is they are fasci-
nating, though it is hard to say what the
source of the fascination is aside from the

54 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

perfection of technique. Conscious control
was certainly born and bred in Japan.

Mr. Naruse had a very strong hold on
people, and his funeral was an event — all
the autos and most of the 'rickshas in Tokyo
must have been there, and some eight or ten
speakers, and even to me who could under-
stand nothing it was very impressive. One
of the civilized things is that before the
speaker bowed to the audience — and they
all bowed back — he bowed to the remains,
which were in a coffin on the platform with
flowers, and more flowers than at an Amer-
ican funeral.

We were to have gone to Baron Shi-
busawa's for tea and dinner this afternoon,
but his influenza has gone into pneumonia.

To go back to Saturday. The reception
was pleasant. We met the Americans who
are educators and in the missionary schools
and colleges ; intelligent and well disposed, so
far as I have seen. The criticism of the mis-
sionaries seems to be rather cooked up. Just

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 55

now there is a fuss ovei them in Korea, be-
cause there is some agitation going on there
for independence, and it seems to have
started with Koreans who had been in mis-
sionary schools. The missionaries here seem
much divided, some of them blaming the
missionaries over there, saying they will
bring Christianity into disrepute every-
where in Japan, and some saying that it
proves Christian teaching amounts to some-
thing and that it will have a good effect in
improving conditions, leading to foreign
criticism and publicity, and causing the Jap-
anese to modify their colonial policy, which
seems to be under military rather than civil
control. There is a rumor that the ex-
Emperor of Korea didn't die a natural
death, but committed suicide, with the hope
of putting off or preventing the marriage of
his oldest son to a Japanese princess — they
were to have been married very soon. No
one seems to know whether the story was in-
dented to encourage the revolutionaries in

56 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

Korea or has truth in it. Meanwhile they
say the wedding is going to take place, and
the Japanese are sorry for their poor prin-
cess, who is sacrified to marry a foreigner.

Thursday evening Mamma invited the
X— -'s and some others, eight including
ourselves, to supper in a Japanese restaurant,
a beef restaurant — they are all specialized —
where we not only sat on the floor and ate
with chop sticks, but where the little slices
of thin beefsteak were brought in raw with
vegetables to flavor, and cooked over a little
pan on a charcoal hibashi, one fire to each
two persons. Naturally it was lots of fun,
a kind of inside picnic.

Oh, yes, something happened Friday.
We went to the Imperial Museum in the
morning and the curator showed us about—
I won't describe a museum — but on the way
home we were taken into a pipe store and
Mamma purchased three little Japanese
pipes, ladies' pipes, to take home. Quite
cunning, and the dealer said this was the

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 57

first time he had ever sold anything to a
foreigner, so he presented her with a little
ladies' pouch and a pipe holder, both made
from Holland cloth, not anything very
precious, but probably worth as much as her
entire purchase, certainly more than the
profit on his sales. These things are quite
touching and an offset to the stories about
their bad business methods, because it is
really a matter of hospitable courtesy to the
foreigner, though he said himself they gen-
erally put the price up for the foreigner on
antiques.

58 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

TOKYO, Thursday, March 14.

We have just had a mild picnic. Mamma
has a slight cold, so the maids hrought her
supper up to her and for sociability brought
mine up too. Mamma got out a Japanese
phrase book and pronounced various
phrases to them; to see them giggle and
bend double, no theater was ever so funny.
When I got to my last bite, I inquired the
name of the food, and said it and "Sayo-
nara" — good night. This old gag was a
triumph of humor. They are certainly a
good-natured people. I have watched the
children come out from a public school near
here, and never yet have I seen a case of
bullying or even of teasing, except of a very
good-natured kind, no quarreling and next
to no disputing. Yet they are sturdy little
things and no mollycoddles. To see a boy
of ten or twelve playing tag and jumping

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 59

ditches with a boy strapped to his back is a
sight. There are no public rebukes or scold-
ings of the children or even cross words, to
say nothing of slappings, no nagging, at
least not in public. Some would say that
the children are not scolded because they
are good, but it is a fair guess that it is
the other way. But it must be admitted
that so far as amiable exterior and cheerful-
ness and courtesy is concerned, they have
no bad examples set them. Some foreign-
ers say all this is only skin deep, but the
manners of the foreigners who say these
things aren't any too good even from our
standards. Anyway, skin deep is better
than nothing and good as far as it goes.
However, the Japanese say that their cour-
tesy is reserved for their friends and people
they know, not that they have bad manners
to strangers, but that they pay no attention
to them, and won't go out of their way to
do anything for them.

I told about the man who made Mamma

60 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

a present when she bought the pipes.
Yesterday we were in that region and
Mamma went in again and bought another,
and paid him a compliment on what peo-
ple said about the present. Whereupon
he gets up and fishes out another more val-
uable pouch, somewhat ragged and old, the
kind the actors now use on the stage* and
offers it. Mamma naturally tries to avoid
it, but can't. He informs her through the
friend with us that he likes Americans very
much. An international matter having
been made of it, the pouch is accepted, and
now we have to think up some present to
give him. However, we have told this story
to several Americans here, and they, say
they have never heard anything like it.

We were to have gone to the Peeress's
School this morning, an appointment hav-
ing been made to show us about. Mamma's
cold preventing her going, we had somebody
'phone to see if the time could be changed.
And this afternoon appear for her some

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 61

lovely lilies and amaryllis — these being from
people we had never seen. A Freudian
would readily infer how bad my own man-
ners are from the amount I talk about this.
We went to a Japanese restaurant for
supper. This was a fish restaurant, and we
cooked the fish and vegetables ourselves, but
over gas, not charcoal this time. Then we
had side dishes, fish, lobster, etc., innumer-
able. Instead of bringing you in a bill of
fare to order from, the coolie brings a big
tray with samples of everything on it, and
you help yourself. One thing was abalones
on the half shell, these being babies, about
like our clams, but not so tough, to say noth-
ing of as tough as the big ones. I didn't
try the fried devil fish and other luxuries,
but wandered pretty far afield. When you
have leisure, try eating lobster in the shell
with chop sticks. You will resort to some-
thing more ancient than chop sticks, as I
did. This restaurant is quite plebeian,
though it has a great reputation for its

62 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

secret recipe for the sauce the fish is cooked
in, but it was considerably more expensive
than the other — probably because we sam-
pled so many side dishes ; the other one cost
less than five dollars for eight people — good
food and all anybody could eat.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 63

TOKYO, March 14th.

The ceremony of breakfast is over, and
I am sorry again you cannot all share in
these daily festivals which add so much to
the dignity of living. We are now study-
ing Japanese with the aid of the maids. I
missed going to the Dolls' Festival at a
private kindergarten and the result — this
morning by mail a postcard from the chil-
dren with numerous presents made by them,
all dolls, and those I will send home, as they
are interesting. With the presents they
say: "We made cakes and prepared for
your coming and we were in the depths of
despair when you did not come. Please
come another time." I am sure there is no
other country in the world like this. The
language is an impossible one. The way
given in the phrases of the guide book is the
way the man speaks. So when I stammer

64 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

off those phrases the girls are literally
tickled to death. When they tell me what
I ought to say in the more elaborated
polite way of the women, then I am floored.
It is all an amusing game and relieves the
watch they keep on each bite we take so as
to be ready to supply more. Everything
they do is marked with the kindliest attitude
and every act or move is one of friendship.
This is the program for to-day: Go to
lunch at the house of some missionaries,
then to father's lecture at 3:30, then to
dinner for University of Chicago students.
To-morrow will be an open day for me and
the little secretary will take me shopping.
The big department store is the fashionable
place where all the noble and rich buy their
kimonos, and I may supplement my second-
hand attempts with a new one. When I
get to Kyoto I hope to find a real old one,
as the new style of weave are infected with
foreign influence. The other evening with
Y we found a little shop for antiques

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 65

which is a gem to look at. An old man and
his wife, Y says he bets they are Samu-
rai, with the politeness of real nobles, and
their little place as carefully arranged for
beauty as if it were their home — which it is. I
broke an old Kutani plate and I inquired for
one there. They had none, but we looked at
their things, they with many bows, and when
we left said we were sorry to have troubled
them for nothing. They replied, "Please
excuse us for not having the thing you
wanted."

To-morrow we go to lunch here in the
neighborhood with a very clever and inter-
esting family (of a professor) . None of the
women call, at least none of the married
ones, all being afraid of their English for
one reason, but I am learning to just take
things as they come and not to bother over
formalities, never knowing whether that is
the best way or not. The wedding of last
Tuesday was the most interesting function
I have seen. The marriage ceremony was

66 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

the Christian one. The company repre-
sented the rich and fashionable of the city.
The ladies all wear black crepe kimonos,
that splendid crepe which is so heavy, next
under the black is an all white of soft china
silk, then the third of bright color. K— -'s
was that bright vermilion red. Her
sleeves were not very long, as she is a
mother, but the young girls wear bright
colored kimonos and long sleeves that
almost touch the floor. The bride wears
black, too. All these dress-up kimonos
have decorations in color, sometimes em-
broidered and sometimes dyed on the lower
points of the front. The bride's was spread
out on the floor around her just like the
old pictures, embroidered in heavy rose
peonies, her undergarment and the lining of
the black, in rose color. Her hair was done
in the old conventional way shown in the
prints with the long pins of light tortoise
shell with bouquets of tiny flowers carved
at the ends, which stuck out about three

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 67

inches, making a crown over her head. The
receiving party is as follows: First, father
of groom; second, mother of bride; third,
groom; fourth, bride; fifth, father of bride;
sixth, mother of groom. The line is straight
and the bride is perfectly arranged like an
old print, she and the groom with their eyes
cast down. As each person passes, they
make bows all along the line at once, but
they do not move hand or eyes or a fold of
these perfect clothes. I forgot to say the
men, unfortunately, wear European dress.
Then we moved on to two large rooms, the
men all seated and smoking in one, and the
women in the other. Those who knew me

were very kind. Countess H introduced

me to the bridesmaids; at least they would
be the maids at home. They were the sisters
and young relatives all dressed in the most
brilliant kimonos and embroidered and dec-
orated to the limit; they looked like all the
parrots and peacocks and paradise and blue
birds and every lovely color imaginable,

68 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

while the uniform black of the guests,
decorated with the pure white of their crests
which stand out in such a group, formed
the perfect background, free from all the
messiness which is so apparent in a diversi-
fied gathering of all sorts of color and shape
and materials in our land. At tea, which
was very elaborate and taken sitting at
the tables, the family of the two filled one
table, a long one at the end of the room.
The bride now wore a green kimono, equally
brilliant; about two feet away from her sat
the groom, both in the middle of the long
table.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 69

TOKYO. Thursday, MarcH 20.

We have had a number of social events

this week. Tuesday evening General H ,

who speaks no English but who came over
on the STiinyo with us, gave a party for
us in the gardens of the Arsenal Grounds.
We could not have entered the Arsenal
Grounds in any other way. There were
about twenty-five people there, mostly
Christian Association people, and the
clergyman of the Japanese church where I
had spoken the night before. He is keen
about introducing more democracy in
Japan, and I spoke on the moral meaning
of democracy. Well, the garden isn't a
garden at all in our sense, but a park, and
the finest in Tokyo outside of the Imperial
ones. It is quite different from the minia-
ture ones we know as Japanese gardens,
being of fair size, with none of those cun-

70 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

ning little imitations in it; big imitations
there are in plenty, as it was a fad of the
old landscapists, as you might know, to re-
produce on a small scale celebrated scenes
elsewhere. The old Daimyo, who built this
one two hundred years ago, was a great ad-
mirer of the Chinese and reproduced several
famous Chinese landscapes as well as one
from Kyoto. The extraordinary thing is
the amount of variety they get in a small
space; they could reproduce the earth, in-
cluding the Alps and a storm in the Irish
Channel, if they had Central Park. Every
detail counts ; it is all so artistically figured
out and every little rock has a meaning of
its own so that a barbarian can only get a
surface view. It would have to be studied
like an artist's masterpiece to take it all in.
The arsenal factory fumes have killed many
of the old trees and much of the glory has
departed.

Probably Mamma has written you that
she has one young woman, Japanese, com-

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 71

ing on the ship with us under her care, to
New York to study; and to-day another
young lady called, and said she wanted to
go back to America. About the young

women going home with us, Y said we

would have to be careful, as one time his
mother was offered seventeen damsels to
escort when she was going over, of whom
she took three. You may not appreciate
the fact that going to America to study
means practically giving up marriage; they
will be old maids and out of it by the time
they return — also those who have been in
America do not take kindly to having a
marriage arranged for them. At a lecture
I listened to yesterday, a Japanese woman,
close to thirty, was pointed out to me as
about to get married to an American archi-
tect here. There are exceptions, but this
case is evidently a famous romance. The
lecture was on Social Aspects of Shinto;
Shinto is the official cult though not the
established religion of Japan. Although

72 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

%

nothing is said that wasn't scientifically a
matter of course to be said — I mean sup-
posing it was scientifically correct — one of
the most interesting things was the caution
that was taken to avoid publication of any-
thing said. On one side the Imperial
Government is theocratic, and this is the
most sensitive side, so that historical criti-
cism or analysis of old documents is not
indulged in, the Ancestors being Gods or
the Gods being Ancestors. One bureau-
cratic gentleman felt sure that the divine
ancestors must have left traces of their own
language somewhere, so he investigated the
old shrines, and sure enough he found on
some of the beams characters different from
Chinese or Japanese. These he copied and
showed for the original language — till some
carpenters saw them and explained that
they were the regular guild marks.

LETTERS FROM CHINA. AND JAPAN 73

KAMAKURA, Thursday, March 27.

This weather beats Chicago for change-
ableness. Monday, at midnight, it was
storming rain; when we got up the next
day it was the brightest, warmest day we
have had. We spent it sightseeing and went
out without an overcoat. The magnolia
trees are in full bloom. Yesterday and to-
day are as raw March days as I ever saw
anywhere; there would have been frost last
night but for the wind. Tuberculosis is rife
here and no wonder.

Three of the University professors have
called on me this morning. They wish to
arrange in every detail for our movements
when we leave here. I suppose I was asked
twenty times how long we are to stay in
Kamakura. When I said I didn't know, it
depended on weather and other things, they
said, "Oh, yes," and in five minutes asked

74 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

the same question again. Whether they ar-
range everything in minute detail for them-
selves in advance or whether they think we
are helpless foreigners I can't make out;
some of both, I think. But they can't un-
derstand that we can't give an exact date
for everything we are going to do till we
go to China. At the same time I never
knew anybody to change their own plans,
especially socially, as much as they do.

There is a great anti- American drive on
now; seems to be largely confined to news-
papers, but also stimulated artificially some-
what, presumably by the militaristic faction,
which has lost more prestige in the last few
months than in years, with a corresponding
gain in liberal sentiment. They have con-
sequently found it necessary to do some-
thing to come back. Criticism of the
United States is the easiest way to arrest
the spread of liberal sentiments and
strengthen the arguments for a big mili-
taristic party, like twisting the lion's tail

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 75

with us. Discussion about race discrimina-
tion is very active and largely directed
against the United States in spite of Aus-
tralia and Canada, and also in spite of the
fact that Chinese and Korean immigration
here is practically forbidden, and they dis-
criminate more against the Chinese than we
do against them. But consistency is not
the strong point of politics in any country.
Excepting on the subject of race discrimina-
tion, foreigners in contact with Japanese
do not find the anti- American feeling which
is expressed in papers. If the Anglo-
Japanese treaty of alliance should lapse be-
cause of the League of Nations or anything
else, America will be held responsible, even
if the British are the cause. Two years
ago there was a similar anti-British drive
here, and pretty hard bargains were driven
with the British ally in all war matters.
Now that Germany and Russia are out of
it, England has no apparent reason for
snuggling up much and the shoe is on the

76 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

other foot. Which makes the attack on the
U. S. all the more stupid, as they are in-
ternationally quite lonely, even if they tie
up with France on account of similar Rus-
sian interests, financial and otherwise.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 77

TOKYO, Wednesday, March 28.

To-morrow we are going to Kamakura
again; it is only an hour and a half from
here. We are going to take a little trip into
the mountain and hot-spring district also,
but the cherry blossom season is much ad-
vanced, ten days earlier than usual, and we
are afraid it will spring itself in our ab-
sence if we go far, so probably we shall be
back here in a few days for about a week.
Then we shall take a five-day trip on our
way to Kyoto, going to the shrine at Ise.
This is the oldest and most sacred Shinto
shrine in Japan, which means that it is the
central spot for imperial ancestor worship.
Speaking of ancestors, you remember our
references to the Count. The father of his
first wife has recently been made a Baron.
Parliament being over, the Count has left
for the southern Island to inform the an-

78 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

cestors of his first wife, who are buried there,
of the important item of family gossip. The
oldest liberal statesman of aristocratic de-
scent, who was quite intimate with the late
Emperor, won't go to the annual meeting
to celebrate the granting of the Constitu-
tion by the late Emperor because he is so
disgusted that no more progress has been
made in constitutionalism, and says he can-
not meet his late master until he can report
progress to him. Otherwise he would be
ashamed to meet him as he feels responsible
to the Emperor. This would not be any
place for a spiritualist to earn his living.
They are clear past mediums.

We have chiefly been eating lately. I
had two Japanese meals, a la chop sticks,
yesterday and one to-day. Luncheon yes-
terday at a restaurant, where we had lots
of things you never heard of, to say nothing
of eating them, and a dinner at a friend's.
There were twelve courses at table and two
or three afterwards — not counting tea, and

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 79

much the same at another dinner to-night.
We have a bill of fare written on fans, only
in Japanese, and little silver salt cellars as
souvenirs besides. One feature of both
dinners was soup three times, at the begin-
ning, about the middle and again at closing,
at these functions rice is not served till
near the last course. Then there were one
or two semi-soupy courses thrown in. I
can eat raw fish and ask no questions; and
in a bird restaurant, Sunday for luncheon,
I ate raw chicken wrapped in seaweed;
abalone is my middle name, and some of
the shell fish we eat is probably devil fish.
We have been here over six weeks now,
and in taking an inventory it can be said
that while we have not done as much sight-
seeing as some six-day tourists, I think we
have seen more Japanese under normal
home conditions than most Americans in six
months, and have seen an unusually large
number of people to talk to, not the official
crowd but the representative intellectual

80 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

liberals. I have seen less but found out
more than I ever expected about Japanese
conditions, which is quite the opposite of
European experience in traveling. When I
come back I shall try to see a few of the
official people, since I now know enough
to judge what they may say. On the whole,
America ought to feel sorry for Japan, or
at least sympathetic with it, and not afraid.
When we have so many problems it seems
absurd to say they have more, but they cer-
tainly have fewer resources, material and
human, in dealing with theirs than we have,
and they have still to take almost the first
step in dealing with many of them. It is
very unfortunate for them that they have
become a first-class power so rapidly and
with so little preparation in many ways; it
is a terrible task for them to live up to their
position and reputation and they may crack
under the strain.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 81

TOKYO, Tuesday, April 1.

The Japanese do one thing that we
should do well to imitate. They teach the
children in school a very nice lesson about
the beauty and the responsibility of being
polite and kind to the foreigner, like being
so to the guests of your own house. This
adds to the national dignity.

.Yesterday the Emperor got out and I
caught him at it. Quite an amazing and
lucky experience for me and no harm to
him, as I had not known he ever went out
before I picked him up in the street. I went
down our hill as usual with a friend to take
the car. At this side of the street where the
car passes, we walk across the bridge on
the canal and then turn and walk one block
to the car stop. When we got to the other
side of the bridge all the people on both
sides of the street were massed in a nice

82 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

little quiet line and three policemen were
carefully and gently placing each one ac-
cording to his height so he could see as well
as possible. So we lined in with the rest
while the policeman looked on in an en-
couraging fashion. Nobody spoke out loud,
and after I had noticed the friend with me
having a conversation with the officer, I
ventured to ask why we were left standing
there. With the same quiet, she said: "The
Emperor is passing on his way to the
commencement exercises of Waseda Uni-
vesity." Well, you could have knocked me
over with a feather. I don't suppose I
should have known what was happening at
all unless I could have figured it out from
the Chrysanthemums on the carriage
doors. I said to her: "How is he coining,
in an automobile? How long are we to
stand here?" I had visions of the
stories about the streets being cleared,
and the doors shut for some hours while
white sand was sprinkled over the car

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 83

tracks, and all the rest. "No,'* she said,
"just a little time." I saw by now that I
was not likely to have much gossip poured
out to me about the Emperor, so I just
fixed a nice little thing about three years
old in front of me and then we waited with
the rest of the school children. Soon the
procession came, first a body of horse in
plain khaki uniforms, then one very Japa-
nese-looking man alone on the back seat
in one of the light victorias, very clean and
shiny, with the Chrysanthemums on the
door. He was dressed in a khaki wool uni-
form just like the rest of the army with a cap
on his head. Then came some other shiny,
light little victorias with two horses, all just
alike. I rubbered my best and I had a very
good look at the one little man alone in the
middle of the seat, and sitting up and look-
ing straight ahead of him pleasantly. In
the midst of the passing I asked the com-
panion with me, "Which is the Emperor?"
and she answered "The one in the first car-

84 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

riage," and still there was that quiet of
perfect breeding; and by and by all the nice
little soldiers on horseback passed, and after
I had stood a little longer on the edge of
my bridge I started our little procession
moving towards the car. The Emperor had
gone the opposite way. After a little I
said: "I did not know the Emperor went
to commencements and things like that,"
and I chattered on, and then my companion
said in her slow, proper, calm tone: "That
is my first experience to see the Emperor,
too." And I said "Is that so?" and asked
some more questions, still wondering that
no one had called out a Banzai nor made a
sound, and it is not till to-day that I learned
that all the people were standing with their
eyes cast down to the ground, and that I
was the only one who looked at the Em-
peror, and their reverence was so great that
that was the reason I had not heard them
breathe. For another thing, Waseda is the
liberal university and private, so I won-

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 85

dered still till I learned then that the
Emperor was going to the Peers' School
commencement, and that is the one com-
mencement he goes to every year. So you
see I had luck, and my conscience was clear
for having rubbered, and I have seen the
Emperor.

The Imperial Garden party comes off
the week after we leave Tokyo. To this
party all the nobles of the third rank and
above, and all the professors in the Im-
perial University, and all the foreigners of
latest arrival, are asked. So a foreigner
can go just once and no more unless a Pro-
fessor. We put our names down in the
Ambassador's book for an invitation before
we knew all the niceties of the case. So
now that we have learned that we can go
once and no more, and that we are expected
to go if we are invited, we will take back
our request for an invitation as the party
is on the 17th of April, and we are to be
in Kyoto on the 15th. So in our good luck,

86 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

a daughter of a Baron, who is a member of
the Imperial household, has asked us to go
with her to-morrow to see the Imperial
Garden where the party is to be and we
may see the gardens all the better. This
Imperial Garden is one of the prince's
gardens and not the one behind the moat
where the Emperor lives. It seems the fall
chrysanthemum party is in that garden,
though never inside the inner moat where
no one goes unless he has an audience. The
moat and the surroundings of the palace
are lovely, but as you can read the guide
book if you want a description, I will not
bore you with an attempt. The walls of
the moat were built by labor of the feudal
dependencies, and like all such labor it
spared no pains to be splendid. Some of
the moats have been filled up long ago, but
there are still three around the palace. In-
side the outer one you may walk part of the
time and see the grand gates with their
solemn guards. In these gardens the air is

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 87

fresh and the birds sing in the trees, and
the dust of the city never gets there.

To-night I am wearing tabi, those nice
little toe socks which will not fit my feet,
but which are so much nicer than the felt
toe slippers that fall off your feet every
time you go upstairs. As a matter of fact,
I wear ordinary house slippers in this house,
but it is nicer not to and we always take
them off when we come in from outdoors.
Truly, the Japanese are a cleaner people
than we are. Have I told you we bathe in
a Japanese tub? Every night a hot, very
hot wooden box over three feet deep is filled
for us. This one has water turned in from
a faucet, but in Kamakura the little char-
coal stove is in the end of the tub and the
water is carried in by buckets, and is re-
heated each night. It seems all right and
I regret all the years our country went
without bath tubs, and all the fuss we made
to get them when this little, simple device
was all there and as old as the hills. But

88 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

we can catch up with the heating and cook-
ing with charcoal hibashi.

We have learned to eat with chop sticks
very well, and it is not a bad way. The
main objection I see to it is that one eats
too fast, and Fletcherizing is not known in
this country. The nice little way of doing
your own cooking is something to introduce
for cuteness in New York. These last few
days we have just been sight-seeing in the
real European sense, running about town
and buying small things all day and then
having the wonderful advantage of coming
back to this delightful home of perfect com-
fort at night, which is quite unlike Europe,
and spoils us for the common lot of knock-
ing about.

The greatest actor of the country is here.
He belongs in Osaka, his name is Ganjiro,
and we have a box for Thursday. The play
is the one that was given in New York
called "Bushido." It is much longer than
as given there. It is called by another

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 89

name and is acted quite differently. On
Sunday we are going again to the Noh
Dance, or if no good tickets are to be had
for that, we are going to a theater where
women act all the parts to offset the usual
way here of having only men in the com-
pany. The men who act women's parts
here do make up very well. They live and
dress and act as women all the time so as
not to lose the art. Only when they stand
in pose they cannot conceal the fact that
they are men. The play begins at one in
the afternoon and lasts until ten at night.
Tea and dinner is brought into your box
in those nice little lacquer lunch boxes.
Ganjiro is on the stage in every scene for
eight hours, so you can see the actors work
for their art here. The costumes are
superb, but the actors do not simply strut
to show off. Their speech being very af-
fected in manner they have had to depend
upon expression to get results, and as a
consequence their acting is done with their

90 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

entire body more than any other school in
the world. The best ones, like the ones we

\

are to see, can express any emotion, so 'tis
said, with their backs and the calves of their
legs when you can't see their faces.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 91

TOKYO, April 1.

Our activities of late have been miscel-
laneous ; we spent three days, counting com-
ing and going four days, at Kamakura last
week. It is on the seaside and is a great
resort, summer and winter, for the Japanese,
and at the hotel for Europeans over week-
ends. For summers the foreigners go to
the mountains, while the Japanese take to
the seaside, largely because there is more
for the children to do on the seashore, but
partly because mountains seem to be an
acquired taste. Kamakura is about ten de-
grees warmer than Tokyo, as it is sheltered
by the hills. Peas were in blossom and the
cherry trees all out. It was cold and rainy
while we were there, however, except one
day, when we crowded in so much sight-
seeing we got rather tired. Mamma and I
are now catching up on calls, prior to leav-

92 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

ing and doing some sightseeing. To-day
we went to a shop where they publish very
fine reproductions of the old art of Japan,
including Chinese paintings owned in
Japan, much better worth buying than the
color print reproductions to my mind,
though we have laid in some reproductions
of the latter. There are so many million-
aires made by the war in Japan, that lots
of the old lords are selling out part of their
treasures now; prices I think are too high
even for Americans. The old Daimyo
families evidently have enough business
sense to take advantage of the market,
though some are hard up and sell more for
that reason. A week ago we went to an
auction room where there was a big collec-
tion of genuine old stuff, much finer than
appears in the curio shops, and this week-
end there is another big sale by a Marquis.
However, it is said they keep the best
things and unload on the nouveau riche; not
but what a lot of it is mighty good as it is.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 93

My other experience that I have not
written about is seeing Judo. The great
Judo expert is president of a normal school,
and he arranged a special exhibition by
experts for my benefit, he explaining the
theory of each part of it in advance. It
took place Sunday morning in a big Judo
hall, and there were lots of couples doing
"free" work, too; they are too quick for my
eye in that to see anything but persons sud-
denly thrown over somebody's back and
flopped down on the ground. It is really
an art. The Professor took the old prac-
tices and studied them, worked out their
mechanical principles, and then devised a
graded scientific set of exercises. The sys-
tem is really not a lot of tricks, but is based
on the elementary laws of mechanics, a
study of the equilibrium of the human body,
the ways in which it is disturbed, how to re-
cover your own and take advantage of the
shiftings of the center of gravity of the
other person. The first thing that is taught

94 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

is how to fall down without being hurt, tKat
alone is worth the price of admission and
ought to be taught in all our gyms. It isn't
a good substitute for out-of-door games,
but I think it is much better than most of
our inside formal gymnastics. The mental
element is much stronger. In short, I think
a study ought to be made here from the
standpoint of conscious control. Tell Mr.
Alexander to get a book by Harrison — a
compatriot of his — out of the library, called
"The Fighting Spirit of Japan." It is a
journalist's book, not meant to be deep, but
is interesting and said to be reliable as far
as it goes. I noticed at the Judo the small
waists of all these people; they breathe al-
ways from the abdomen. Their biceps are
not specially large, but their forearms are
larger than any I have ever seen. I have
yet to see a Japanese throw his head back
when he rises. In the army they have an
indirect method of getting deep breathing
which really goes back to the Buddhist Zen

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 95

teaching of the old Samurai. However,
they have adopted a lot of the modern
physical exercises from other armies.

The gardens round here are full of cherry
trees in blossom — and the streets are full of
people too full of sake. The Japanese take
their drunkenness apparently seasonly, as
we hadn't seen drunken people till now.

96 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

TOKYO, April 2.

We have had another great day to-day.
This morning rose early and wrote letters,
which were not sent in spite of the haste, as
we decided the slow boat was slower than
waiting for a later and faster one. So you
ought to get many letters at once. The day
has been sunshiny and bright, but not at all
sultry, so perfect for getting about. Y We
went to the art store to get some prints
which we had selected the day before and
then on to call on a Professor of Political
Economy, who is also a member of Parlia-
ment, radical and very wide awake and in-
teresting, quite like an American in his
energy and curiosity and interest. We
visited and learned a lot about things here
and there and then he took us to lunch at
his mother-in-law's house. They have a
beautiful house in Japanese style, with a

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 97

foreign style addition, like most of the
houses of the rich, the Japanese part
having no resemblance whatever to the
foreign, which is so much less beautiful.
In carpets and table covers and tapestries
imitated from the German, the Japanese
have no taste, while in their own line they
remain exquisite. This house is one of the
most absolute cleanliness. No floor in it but
shines like a mirror and has not a fleck of
dust, never had one. Let me see if I can
describe accurately this entertainment. We
took three 'rickshas and rode through the
cherry lined narrow streets over hills where
are the lovely gardens of the rich showing
through the gateways and showing over the
top of the bamboo walls, which are built of
poles about six feet long upright and tied
together with cords. They are very pretty
with the green. When we reached the house

Mr. U took us in to the foreign drawing

room, which is very mid- Victorian and Ger-
man in its general effect. This one has in

98 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

it a beautiful lacquer cabinet, very large and
quite overpowering every other thing in the
room. There the ladies of the house came
in and made their bows, very amiable and
smiling at our thanks for their hospitality.
The sister-in-law, a young girl of sixteen,
who wants to go to America, and afterwards
the grandmother, very much the command-
ing character that a grandmother ought to
be. The children hovered round them all
much like our children. The ladies brought
us tea with their own hands in lovely blue
and white cups with little lacquer stands and
covers. Candy with the tea, which was
green. I forgot to say that we had already,

during the hour with Mr. U had tea three

different times and of three different kinds,
besides little refreshments therewith. After
a little we were summoned to lunch. Three
places set on a low table and a beautiful blue
brocade cushion to sit upon. The two
younger ladies on their knees ready to serve
us. They poured out wine for us, or Ver-

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 99

mouth, and we took the latter. We had
before us, each, one lacquer bowl, covered,
that contained the usual fish soup with little
pieces of fish and green things cut up in it.
This we drink, putting the solid bits into
our jnouths with the chop sticks. The
grandmother thought she ought to have pre-
pared foreign food, but the clever girl of
sixteen had spoken for home food, and so
we thanked them for giving that to us, as
we seldom get a real genuine Japanese
meal. And this is the first we have had
where we were served by the ladies of the
house, except the dolls' food at the festival.
It seems this is the highest compliment that
we have had, as the real Japanese home is
open to the foreigner only when the for-
eigner is asked to sit on the floor and is
served by the ladies of the household. They
kneel near the table and the maid brings the
dishes and hands them to the ladies, who in
turn serve the dishes to the guests. It is
very pretty. I have reached the stage where

100 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

I can sit on my heels for the length of a
meal, but I rise very awkwardly, as my
feet are asleep clear up to my knees at
the end. We ate soup, cold fried lobster
and shrimps, which are dipped in sauce
besides; and cold vegetables in another
bowl, and then hot fried fish; then some
little pickles, then rice, of which the
Japanese eat several bowls, then the des-
sert, which has been beside you all the
time, and is a cold omelette, which tastes
very good, and then they give you tea, For-
mosa oolong. We had toast, too, but that
is foreign. Then we left the table and were
shown the rooms upstairs, which contain
many pieces of lacquer and bronze and
woodwork, and then we went down and
there was tea and a dish of fruit ready for
us. We had not much time for this, as they
were going to send us in a motor to the
Imperial Gardens. But as the last kind of
tea had to be brought we were at the door
putting on our shoes when it arrived. This

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 101

tea is strong oolong and has milk in it, with
two lumps of sugar for you to put in your-
self. Thus we had been served with tea six
times within three hours.

It is hard to describe the Imperial Gar-
dens. Read the guide book and you will
see that it is. Ten thousand orchid plants
were the beginning of the sight. We saw
the lettuce and the string beans and the to-
matoes and potatoes and eggplant and
melons, and all growing under glass, for the
Emperor to eat. Never saw such perfect
lettuce, all the heads in one frame of exactly
the same size and arrangement, as if they
were artificial, and all the others just right.
Why potatoes under glass? Don't ask me.
Grapes in pots looked as if the raising of
grapes under glass was in its beginning, but
maybe not, as I was not familiar enough
with those little vines to know whether they
would bear or not. The flowers in the
frames were perfection. Masses of Mig-
nonette daisies, and some other bright

102 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

flowers I did not know were ready to
put out in the beds which were pre-
pared for the garden party. We cannot go
on the 17th. A very large pavilion with
shingle roof under which the Emperor and
Empress are to sit at the party is being
built and will be taken down the next day,
or rather week, as it will take more than
one day. Then if it rains there will be no
party. To-night it looks as if rain might
spoil the blossoms. But to-day was perfect.
It is a little surprising when one sees this
famous garden after reading about Japan-
ese gardens for all one's life. There is such
a large expanse of grass with no flowers and
the grass does not get green here so soon as
with us, and it is now all brown, though big
masses of daffodils are superb. These under
the cherry trees with the sunshine shining
through slantways made one of the brilliant
sights of a lifetime. The artificial lakes
and rivers and waterfall and the bridges and
islands and hills with big birds walking and

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 103

swimming make enough to have come for to
Japan. The groups of trees are as fine as
anything can be and across the long ex-
panses the view of them is like a succession
of pictures. There are a hundred and sixty-
five acres in the park, no buildings. In the
beginning it was pretty well to one side of
the city, but now it is on a car track of much
travel, though still on the outskirts on its
outer edge.

On Monday we have arranged to go to
the theater again at the Imperial. To-day
it is the great actor Ganjiro at a small the-
ater. It is said the jealousy of the Tokyo
actors and managers keeps Gan j iro from get-
ting a fair chance when he comes here. Mr.

T , formerly of Chicago, has just been

here to try to arrange a dinner for us before
we leave, the dinner to be at a restaurant
with all the old students present. The res-
taurants are always amusing and we agreed,
of course. This may keep us in Tokyo one
day longer, though that is not decided yet.

104 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

For the rest of the time we are to make
up on calls as far as we can and ride about
to see the cherry blossoms, and I hope we
may see some of the famous tea houses.
Thus far we have seen no tea house at all,
and there is not one afternoon tea house
where ladies go in this city excepting the
new-fashioned department stores, and they
do not stand for anything different than
they do with us. This shows how little the
real ladies of Tokyo go out of their houses.
The Sumida river is a big river gathering
up all the small streams from one side of
the mountains. It is full of junks and other
craft and is the center of much history, both
for Tokyo as a city and for the whole
country.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 105

TOKYO, April 4.

Ganjiro, the greatest actor from Osaka,
is acting here now, and the show was great.
He did the scene among other things they
did in New York under the name of "Bush-
ido." A dance by a fox who had taken the
form of a man was a wonderful thing.
There is no use in trying to describe it, It
was not just slow posturings, like the
other Japanese dances we have seen, nor
was it as wild as the Russian dancers;
he did it alone, no companion, male or
female. But it was as free as the Rus-
sian and much more classic at the
same time. You will never realize what the
human hand and arm can do until you see
this. He put on a number of masks and
then acted or danced according to the type
of mask he had on. He can do an animal's
motions without any clawing — as graceful

106 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

and lithe as a cat. He is a son of an old
man Ganjiro.

Our last days here are rather crowded
and we aren't going to get the things done
that should be done. Cherry blossoms are
at their height — another thing indescribable,
but if dogwood trees were bigger and the
blossoms were tinged with pink without
being pink it would give the effect more
than anything else I know. The indescrib-
able part is the tree full of blossoms without
leaves; of course you get that in the mag-
nolias, but they are coarse where the cherry
is delicate. We went to a museum to-day,
which is finer in some respects than the Im-
perial; gods till you can't rest, and wonder-
ful Chinese things, everything except paint-
ings.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 107

TOKYO, April 8.

We are actually packing up and get away
to-morrow morning at 8:30 — we travel all
day, the first part till four o'clock on the
fastest train in Japan. The ordinary trains
make about fifteen miles an hour, Japan
having unfortunately adopted narrow gauge
in early days and going on the well-known
principle of safety first. We have had vari-
ous and sundry experiences since writing, the
most interesting being on Sunday ^ when we
were taken into the country both to see the
cherry blossoms and the merry-niakers ; the
time is a kind of a carnival and mild satur-
nalia based on bright clothes, and wigs,
and sake, about ninety per cent sake.
There were a few besides ourselves not in-
toxicated, but not many. Everybody prac-
ticed whatever English he knew on us, one
dressed-up fellow informing us "I Chrallie

108 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

Chaplin," and he was as good an imitation
as most. Aside from one fight we saw no
rudeness and not much boisterousness, the
mental effect being apparently to make
them confidential and demonstrative.
Usually they are very reserved with one
another, but Sunday it looked as if they
were telling each other all their deepest
secrets and life ambitions. .Our host of the
day laughed most benevolently all the time,
not excluding when a fellow dressed in
bright red woman's clothes insisted on rid-
ing on the running board. They get drunk
so seldom that it didn't appeal to him so
much as a drunk as it did as a popular fes-
tival ; the people really were happy.

There were miles of trees planted each
side of a canal that supplies Tokyo with
water, all kinds of trees and in all stages of
development, from no blossoms to full, no
leaf and beautiful little pink leaves. The
blossoms are dropping, it is almost a mild
snowfall, and yet the trees seem full.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 109

Yesterday we went to the theater again,
the Imperial, a party of ten filling two
boxes. We were taken behind the scenes
and shown the green rooms, etc., and intro-
duced to an actor and to his son, about
eleven, who appeared on the stage later and
did a very pretty dance. He had a teacher
in the roora and was doing his Chinese writ-
ing lesson, never looked up till he was
spoken to, about the handsomest and most
intelligent looking lad I have seen in Japan.
Acting is practically an hereditary profes-
sion here. I doubt if an outsider not trained
from early childhood could possibly do the
acting anyway, and I don't think the guild
would let him break in if he could, though
one man of British extraction has been quite
successful on the Japanese stage. We saw
some very interesting things yesterday, in-
cluding dances, and learned that they are
very anxious to come to America, but they
want a patron. If the scenes were selected
with great care to take those that have lots

110 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

of action and not so much talking, and the
libretto was carefully explained, they could
make a hit in New York at least.

Our other blowout was the other evening
at a Japanese classic tea house, a part of a
Noh dance for entertainment and a twelve-
course meal or so. The most interesting
thing though is talking to people. On the
whole I think we have a chance to see people
who know Japan much better than most.
We haven't been officialized and putting the
different things together I think we have as
good an acquaintance with the social con-
ditions as anybody would be likely to get
in eight weeks. An experienced journalist
could get it, so far as information is con-
cerned, in a few days, but I think things
have to be soaked in by cumulative impres-
sions to get the feel of the thing and the
background. When they told me first that
this was a great psychological jnoment, that
everything was critical and crucial, I didn't
know what they meant, and I could hardly

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 111

put it in words now, any jnore than they
did, but I know inside of me. There are
few external signs of a change, but Japan
is nearly in the condition she was in during
the first years of contact and opening up of
things fifty or so years ago, so far as the
mental readiness for change is concerned,
and the next few years may see rapid social
changes.

112 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

NARA, April 12.

Well, we have started on our journey and
have seen Japan for the first time, scenically
speaking, that is to say. The first day's
ride from Tokyo to Nagoya was interesting,
but not particularly so except for Fuji,
which we saw off and on for several hours,
and on three sides. As sometimes it isn't
visible, and we had a fine warm day, we had
good luck. Nagoya is where the best old
castle in Japan is, you may even in your be-
nighted country and estate have heard of
the two golden dolphins on top. The castle
is an imperial palace and it turned out that
you have to have a permit from Tokyo, but
we set out to try to get in, and as we had

met a nice young man at the X 's in

Tokyo who came from Nara, we telephoned
him, and while we didn't get in through him
(he said he could never get in himself under

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 113

any circumstances) he promptly asked us to
dinner. Then we were taken to the swellest
tea house in Nara and had another of those
elaborate dinners, on what he called the tea-
istic plan. We began with the tea ceremony
without the ceremony but with the pow-
dered tea, the bowl being prepared for each
one separately in succession. The Nara
cooking is better, we all thought, than the
Tokyo, the food being more savory and the
variety of flavors greater, an opinion which
pleased our host. Expressing some curi-
osity about some four-inch trout which
seemed to have a sugar caramel coating, we
found that they were cooked in a kind of
liquor which deposited the sweetness, and
then we were presented with a bottle of the
drink known as Mirin, so now we are lug-
ging glassware. Then after the dinner he
said that he hoped that we would not think
him guilty of improper action, but that he
had invited the best samisen player and
singer in Nagoya, and also some dancers.

114 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

In other words, some geishas were intro-
duced and sang, played and danced before
King David. There are all grades from
those comparable to chorus girls at Jack's to
high grade actresses, and these were of the
upper kind. He said he wished us to see
something of true Japan which few for-
eigners saw, this referring to the restaurant
as well as the dancing. They won't receive
anybody who isn't an old client or friend
of one of these high toned places. But the
ladies of the party thought he was especially
interested in one of the girls. Personally I
think the dancing and music are much more
interesting than they are reported to be in
the guide books.

The next day we went to the primitive
Ise shrines, arriving cross and hungry at
about two, but bound to get the pilgrimage
over, especially as it wasn't good weather.
Yamada, where the sacred shrines are, is a
very beautiful place, with wooded hills and
little streams. The trees are largely cryp-

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 115

tomerias, which are evidently some relative
of the California redwoods, and while not
nearly as tall, make much the same effect.
It is a darling spot, filled with the usual
thousands of carpet bagger (literally the old
Brussel carpet bags) pilgrims. As pre-
viously reported I toted a borrowed frock
coat and stovepipe hat. Dur guide said
special clothing was not needed for the
ladies. I put on my war paint, and the chief
priest having been written from Toyko of
our impending arrival, an hour had been
set. At the outermost gate, the Torii, the
ceremony of purification, took place. We
had water poured out on our hands out of
a little cerepaonial cup and basin and then
the priest sprinkled salt on us; nobody else
had this but us. Then when we got to the
fence gate, we were told that the ladies not
baring "visiting dresses," whatever they are,
couldn't go inside, but that I should be
treated as of the same rank as an Imperial
professor and allowed to go. I forgot to

116 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

say that we had a gendarme in front of us
to shoo the vulgar herd out of our way.
Then we marched slowly in behind the
priest, on stones brought from the seaside,
through a picket fence to designated spots
near the next fence, I being allowed nearer
to the gate than our Japanese guide;
and we worshiped, that is bowed. I got
my bow over disgracefully quick, but I
think our Japanese conductor stood at least
fifteen minutes.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 117

KYOTO, April 15.

Here we are in the Florence of Japan,
and even more to see if possible than in
Italy. We have had a rainy day to-day,
which is perhaps a good beginning for a
week of constant sightseeing. This morn-
ing we spent in Yamanaka's — the most
beautiful shop I ever saw, composed of the
finest Japanese rooms of the finest propor-
tions and filled with the most beautiful art
specimens of all kinds. But the kinds are
properly assorted in true Japanese fashion.
I bought a red brocade. It is a panel, old
red with figures of gold and some dark blue,
peonies and birds. It is what the Buddhist
priests wear over the left arm in procession.
We have the certificate that it is over a hun-
dred years old. The panel is about five feet
long and one wide, the strips which compose
it are four in number, sewed in seams, which

118 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

turn the corners in mortise fashion, and yet
they all match perfectly. Most of these
strips are woven in these ribbons and sewed
together. I got a second one which is pur-
ple with splendid big birds and peonies
again. I like the peony in brocade much
better than the chrysanthemum or the
smaller flowers. Some fine ones with pome-
granates are tempting, but I did not buy the
most beautiful on account of the prospects
of spending money better in China. I also
bought a pretty tea set which I have here
in my room — it cost 30 sen, which means
fifteen cents for teapot and five cups, gray
pottery with blue decorations. There are
many cheaper ones that are pretty too. To-
jnorrow we go to the original temple where
the tea ceremony originated and are to par-
ticipate in the tea ceremony, which the high
priest will perform for us. You better get
a guide book and read about the temples of
Kyoto, as they are too numerous .to tell
about in letters. We have the municipal car

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 119

for all these occasions. Good thing we do,
for Kyoto has shrunk like a nut in its shell
since the days of its ancient capital size and
the distances between temples are enormous.
Next day we go to the Imperial Palaces,
and so go on and on getting fatter and
fatter.

The weather and the spring time are
superb. Cherry blossoms were gone when
we got here, but the young leaves of the
maples are lovely green or red and the whole
earth is paradise now. The hills are nearer
than in Florence, the mountains higher, so
that Kyoto has every natural beauty. We
shall only have a week here and then go to
Osaka, where the puppet theater is and
where there is a school of drama, of which
Ganjiro is the leader. It is the doll theater
we want to see, because that is the origin of
all acting in Japan. Many of the conven-
tions of the theater are based on the move-
ments of the puppets.

Kyoto in many respects is the most lovely

120 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

thing the world has to show, such a combi-
nation of nature and art as one dreams of.
These wonderful temples of enormous size,
of natural wood filled with paintings and
sculpture of an ancient and unknown kind,
fascinate one to the point of feeling there
must be many more worlds when such mul-
tiplicity of ideas and feelings can exist on
a single planet, and we live unconscious of
the whole of it or even of any part of its
extent. The gardens we have seen to-day
are the old Japan unchanged since they
were made a thousand years ago, when they
took the ancient ideas of China and India
for models. The temples of Tokyo seem
like shabby relics of a worn-out era, but
here the perfection of their art remains and
is kept intact. The landscape of the first
Buddhist monastery, where the tea cere-
mony originated, has the same rivers and
islands and little piles of sand which were
placed in the beginning, all in miniature,
and planted with miniature trees, all imita-

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 121

tions of real scenes in China when China was
the land of culture. Now they say even the
originals are destroyed in China, which is
so out of repair that it depresses every one
who sees it. Fifty years ago they advertised
for sale here in Nara, a lovely pagoda five
stories high for fifty yen. It is obviously
necessary for some American millionaire to
buy up the massive gates and pagodas and
temples of China in order to redeem them
from complete ruin. The Japanese are the
one people who have waked up in time to
the value of these historic things, and several
of the temples have been rebuilt before the
old material was so rotted as to make them
hopeless. Wood is a magnificent material
when it is used in such massive structures
as it is here. The biggest bell in the world,
twelve feet high, is hung on a great tree
trunk in a belfry with a curled-up roof of
flower-like proportions, first having been
hauled to the top of the high hill. We shall
hear it boom next Saturday. We heard the

122 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

one in Nara, the deepest thing I ever
thought to hear, nine feet high. They are
beautiful bronze and they are very mellow
and melodious and reach to the center of
whatever the center of your being may be
and leave you to hope the greater unknown
of the judgment day may be a call like '.hat
sound.

We had lunch with Miss D . She tells

stories about the efforts of the Japanese
girls to get an education that make you
want to sell your earrings, even if you have
none, in order to give the money to these
idealists. They are as much pioneers as our
forebears who chopped down the trees, but
they can't get at a tree to chop. She says
she wants me to go back to America and to
go to every Congregational church there
and tell them they must send money here to
give education to the people.

One day we have the mayor's car to go
about in and the next day the University
hires a car for us and we indulge ourselves

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 123

in all kinds of doings we do not deserve and
sometimes wonder if we shall have to com-
mit suicide after it ends in order to condone
the point of honor. Certainly these people
have a nobility of character which entitles
them to race equality.

I want to find a nice quiet place to stay
and come back and see the sights at greater
length. The paintings on the walls are
mostly ruined, but the kakemonas and the
screens and the makemonas, those are won-
derful and I am glad to say that we have
got over seeing them as grotesque, and we
feel their beauty. When once you see that
the trees in the ground are real and that
they look just as the trees in the pictures
have always looked, then you begin to ap-
preciate both nature and human nature as
depicted.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

KYOTO, April 15.

To-day is rainy and we haven't done
much. We got here yesterday noon. The
hotel is on the side of a hill with wonderful
views, and is pretty good, though the one
at Nara which is run by the Imperial Rail-
way System is the only first-class one we
have seen so far. In the afternoon the Uni-
versity sent a car and we took an auto ride
into the suburbs to a famous cherry place —
it was too late for blossoms, but the river
and hills and woods were beautiful, and we
saw the usual large crowd enjoying life. It
is really wonderful the way the people go
out, all classes, and the amount of pleasure
they get out of doors and in the tea houses.
I have never been anywhere where every
day seemed so much of a holiday as in Japan
— there is still sake in evidence but not so
much.

This month a special geisha dance is
given Here at a theater connected with a

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

training school ; the dance lasts an hour and
is repeated four or five consecutive hours.
We went last night; the dancing is much
more mechanical posturing than the theater
dancing, or than the little geisha dance we
saw at Nara, but the color combinations and
the way they handled the scenery were won-
derful. There were eight very different
scenes and it didn't take more than a minute
to make any change. Once a curtain was
simply drawn down through a trap door,
another time what had looked like a canvas
mat in front of the curtain was pulled up
and it turned out to be painted on one side.
But they had a different method every time.
The mayor has invited me to speak to the
teachers Saturday afternoon, and after-
wards we are invited by the municipality to
a Japanese dinner. They are also putting
the city auto — the only one apparently — at
our disposal, when they aren't using it, and
have arranged to take us to a porcelain and
a weaving factory next Monday. This town

126 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

is the headquarters of Japan for artistic
production, ancient and modern. The Uni-
versity authorities also telephoned to Tokyo
and got permission for us to visit the palaces
here, but they are said not to be equal to
the Nagoya ones which we missed. While
at Nara we spent most of our time at the
Horiuji temples, some miles out. I won't
do the encyclopedia act except to say that
they are the headquarters of the introduc-
tion of Buddhism into Japan thirteen hun-
dred years ago, which meant civilization,
especially art, and have the wall frescoes,
unfortunately faint, of that period, and lots
of sculpture ; this means wood carving, as of
course there is no marble here. Well, it
happened that it was the birthday of Prince
Shotoku, who was the gentleman respon-
sible for the aforesaid introduction, and of
whom there are many statues, age of two,
twelve and sixteen being favorites ; his piety
was precocious. Consequently, everything
was wide open. Every kind of peep show

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 127

and stall, and more than the usual hundreds
of pilgrims who combine pleasure with piety
in a way that beats even the Italian peasants ;
when they have money here they spend it;
tightwadism is not a Japanese vice. Well,
we were taken into the garden of the chief
priest to eat our luncheon; of course, he
was very busy, but greeted us in gorgeous
robes and then sent out tea and rice cakes.
The contrast between this lovely little
garden and the drums and barkers just be-
yond the walls and the wonderful old artistic
shrines beyond the barkers and ham and
egg row was as interesting as anything in
Japan.

You may remember Miss E is rather

tall for an American woman, even. Mamma
is something of an object to the country peo-
ple, but Miss E is a spectacle. Curiosity

is the only emotion the Japanese are not
taught to conceal apparently. They gather
around in scores, literally. I don't know
how many times I have seen parents make

128 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

sure the children didn't miss the show.
Several times I have seen people walk
slowly and solemnly all the way around us
to make sure they missed nothing. No
rudeness ever, just plain curiosity. As we
were going to the museum after breakfast,
a few of those children, girls, appeared and
bowed. First I knew one of them had hold
of each of my hands, and went with us as far
as the museum — girls of nine or ten. It was
touching to see their friendliness, especially
one evidently rather poor, who would look
up at me and laugh, and then squeeze my
hand and press it against herself, and then
laugh with delight again. I haven't been
able to discover when it ceases to be proper
for children to be natural. Sunday morning
some soldiers were going off to Manchuria
— or Korea — and before eight we heard the
patter of the clogs down the street and some
hundred of boys and girls were marching
down to the station with their teachers ; the
same thing next morning, for the soldiers.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 129

KYOTO, April 19.

We have just come from another Geisha
party, given by the mayor and about fifteen
of the other officers of the city. Papa is
quite stuck up because they say it is the
first time the city of Kyoto ever entertained
a scholar in that fashion. But if he is stuck
up what should I be when a woman appears
for the first time in history at a men's ca-
rouse in Japan? The Geisha girls are all
the way from eleven years old to something
like fifty. One of the older ones is the best
dancer in the city, and she gave us one of
the wonderful pantomime dances that so
fascinate one here. She has been in jail for
her political activities, said activities con-
sisting in the active distribution of funds in
order to elect someone she favored, It is
against the law for a woman to take any
part in politics here. Like all the older
women of that class that I have seen she has

130 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

a sad look when her face is at rest. But
they all talk and entertain so busily that the
sadness is not seen by the men. They are a
very cultivated lot of women so far as we
have seen them; of course we see only the
best. They talk with the composure of a
duchess and the good nature of a child. It
is a rare combination. They are very curi-
ous about us and ask all sorts of questions.
One girl of seventeen said she loved babies
and how many did I have? When I told
her five she was delighted. She had a rose-
bud mouth just like the old prints and
danced with the old print postures. The
girls pass the drinks and the rice which al-
ways comes at the end of such feasts. The
little eleven-year-old gave a dance called
"Climbing Fuji." Wonderful flat-footed
movements that make you feel exactly as if
you were climbing with her. In the middle
part she puts on a mask which is puffy in
the cheeks, and then she wipes the perspira-
tion and washes her little face and fans her-

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 131

self and goes on again, flatfooted. All the
motions are most elegant and graceful and
subtle and serpentine, never an abrupt or
sudden gesture, and never quite literal in
any sense. After the dance was finished
she came and sat by me and her skin was
hot as if she had a fever. All the men were
older and I must say they treated her very
nicely.

This is the way those feasts go. We
enter the restaurant in stocking feet, and
are usually shown to a small room where
we kneel on the cushions and take tea while
waiting for all the guests to assemble.
About six this time, we were shown to the
large room, which is always surrounded by
gold screens and shoji, which slide back be-
fore the windows. Cushions are placed
about three feet apart on three sides of the
long and beautifully shaped room. In the
middle of one side they are piled up so the
foreign guests of honor may sit instead of
Eneeling Japanese fashion. We place our-

132 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

selves after having all the guests one after
another brought up. We shake hands be-
cause their bows are rather impossible and
they have adapted themselves to our way.
Then we all squat again. Then the pretty
waitresses come slithering across the floor,
each with a tiny table in her hands. The
first is for Papa, the second for me, then
the mayor, and so on. The mayor is down
at the end of the line. After each one has
his table before him the mayor comes to the
center of the hollow square and makes a
little speech of welcome. He always tells
you how sorry he is he has such a poor en-
tertainment and that he could not do better
for these distinguished guests who do him
so much honor by coming, and how this is
the first time the city has ever honored a
foreign scholar by this kind of entertain-
ment. Then Papa does his best to make a
reply, and after he sits down we lift the
cover of a lovely lacquer soup bowl and lift
the chop sticks. You take a drink of soup,

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 133

lift a thin slippery slice of raw fish from its
little dish, dip it in the sauce and put it in
your mouth. To-night this first soup is a
rich and rare green turtle, delicious. So
you drink it all and take a little fish, but
our guide warns us not to take too much
raw fish as we are not accustomed it. By
this time another tray of pretty lacquer is
put beside you on the floor and on it is a
tiny tray or platter of lacquer on which are
placed two little fish browned to perfection,
and trimmed with two little cakes of egg
and powdered fish, very nicely rolled in
cherry leaves. Every dish is a work of art
in its arrangement. These two fish are the
favorite of the last emperor, and you do not
blame him. They are cooked in mirin, a
kind of sweet liquor made from sake, and
you eat all you can pick off the bones with
your hashi. As soon as this tray is in place
you see a lovely little girl with her long,
bright-colored kimona on the floor around
her, and she has in her hand a blue and

134 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

white china bottle placed in a tiny lacquer
coaster, and you know the feast is really
under way. She is followed by the older
girls, and little by little one at a time and
quite gradually the dancing girls come in
and bow to the floor while they pour out the
sake. They laugh at the ways of the for-
eigners who always forget it is the part of
the guest to hold out his tiny cup for the
poison. Everybody drinks to the health of
everybody else and there stops my sake, but
the Japanese drink on and on, one cup at
a sip and the hand reaching out for more.
Talk gets livelier, the girls take more part
in it. They are said by some to be the only
interesting women in Japan. At any rate,
no wives are ever there but me, and the girls
are beautifully cultured, moving at the
slightest suggestion of voice or gesture and
always seeing quickly and very pleasantly
what each one wants. As soon as they see
we do not drink sake they bring many
bottles of mineral water for us. Then they

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 135

do their beautiful dances. Two, about seven-
teen years old, did one called "Twilight
on the east hill of Kyoto." In Nagoya,
in Tokyo, or wherever you are, the theme
is always some natural event connected with
the nature near by. Always simple and
classic. Then the famous old dancer did a
subtle thing called "The nurse putting the
child to sleep." That is another favorite
theme. This was lovely, but sometimes too
subtle for us to grasp all the movements.
These girls all dress in dark colors like the
ladies, only with the difference prescribed
by the profession, such as the low neck in
the back and the full length of the kimona
on the floor like a wave around her. With
the young ones the obi is different, being
tied to drop down on the floor in a long bow.
The young ones also have the bright hair
ornaments and the very long sleeves. But
so do other young girls wear the long sleeves
for company dress.

There are other courses of fish; one of

136 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

four strawberries, two slices of orange, some
mint jelly cut in cubes, and sweetened
bamboo slices in the middle of the list. Then
more fish courses, many of them bright-
colored shell fish which are always rather
tough. Then a very nice mixture of sour
cucumber salad and little pieces of lobster
or crab, very nice and any sour thing is
good with these many courses of fish. At
the end bowls of rice, which is brought in
in a big lacquer dish with a cover looking
some like a small barrel. This is put into
bowls by one of the older dancers and
handed about by the younger ones who get
up and down from their kneeling posture
by just lifting themselves as if they had no
weight, on their toes. Many of the Japanese
take the regulation three bowls full of rice,
and eat it very fast. I must say their rice
is delicious, but I cannot get away with
more than one bowl, partly because I can-
not gobble. Then, for the last, your bowl
is filled with tea.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 137

All this time the gentlemen from the
other parts of the room are kneeling one
at a time before you asking you if you like
the cherry dance and what your first im-
pressions of Japan were, and all such talk,
and you have become intimate friends with
the dancers as well, maybe with no common
language except "thank you" and "very
nice" and "good-bye," and constant smiles
and interpretations now and then from
others who know a very little English. One
thing no one expects is for a foreigner to
know a word of Japanese. Therefore, when
you pop out an awkward word or two, you
are applauded by laughter and compliments
on your good pronunciation. To-night we
had the very tiniest of green peppers cooked
as a vegetable with one of the dishes. That
was good as it had flavor; three of them
about as big as a hairpin were served in the
dish. You always get tiny portions and are
usually warned not to eat too much at the
first part of the meal. In the tea-dinner the

138 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

rice comes along at the beginning so it can
be eaten with the fish, and that is an agree-
able variety though you are told not to eat
too much of it as there are other courses to
follow. I forgot to say there is always a
course in the middle which is a hot custard
made with broth instead of milk and sea-
soned with vegetables. That is good, too.
In fact, I have become quite fond of this
fish food.

When we got in the motor car at the gate
of the restaurant, all the gay little dancers
were standing there in the rain waving their
hands in American fashion till we went out
of sight. Then I suppose the tired little
things went back and danced for more men.
We were home at 8:30. All the dinners
seem to be early here in Japan, except what
are called the foreign ones and they follow
our hours as well as our style.

I must tell you the best tea in Japan
grows here at a place nearby called Uji.
We had that tea after a lecture in the city

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 139

Hall. It is strong to the danger point, and
has a flavor unlike anything else. An acid
like lemon and no bitter at all; leaves a
smooth pleasant taste something like dry
sherry, and is generally delicious. It costs
at least ten yen a pound here, but I shall
get some to take home. Very good ordi-
nary tea here costs fifteen sen a pound, seven
and a half cents.

140 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

KYOTO, April 22.

To-day we were taken visiting schools —
first a Boys' High school, then an elemen-
tary school which had an American flag
along with the Japanese over the door in
our honor, and which was awfully nice.
The children did lots of cunning stunts for
us, one little kid beating the Japanese
drum for their rhythmic marching, which
they are good at. Then a textile school for
textile design, weaving and dyeing, which
for some unexplained reason was bad and
poorly attended. The machines were old,
German and out of date. In fact, it all
looked as if it had been worked off on them
second hand by some Germans who didn't
want them ever to amount to anything. All
of the best work here is still done by hand,
although they have good electric power de-
veloped from the water they have. Then we

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 141

went to a Girls' High School, combined
with a college for girls, preparing teachers
for the regular high schools. The elite of
Kyoto go there, and it, like the other schools,
was very nice and good. They specialize in
domestic science and we ate a fine Japanese
lunch they had prepared. All this, like most
our other trips, in the mayor's car.

This is really a country where the scholar
is looked up to and not down upon. In
virtue of having lectured at the Imperial
University I am "Your Excellency" offi-
cially. Osaka city does not wish to be out-
done by Kyoto, so I am to lecture to the
teachers there, and the city is to provide
for us at the hotel, and the mayor to give
us a banquet there. Of course, Mamma is
the only woman present, as it would not
occur to them to invite their own wives.
Foreign women are expected, however, to
do strange things, and they are very polite
to them. The geisha women seem to be
about the only ones who have an all-around

142 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

education — not of the book type, but in the
sense of knowing about things and being
able and willing to talk — and I think the
men go to these banquets and talk to them
because they are tired of their too obeyful
wives and their overdocility. One woman
at the banquet we went to was known as
the Singing Butterfly, and has the name
Constitution as a nickname, because of her
supposed interest in politics, especially on
the liberal side. When we heard that she
had been in prison because of her interest in
politics, we sat up and took notice, but it
turned out that it was for bribing voters
to vote for a man she was interested in. But
she is a local celebrity all right, and her stay
in prison had evidently added to her interest
and prestige.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 143

April 28, on the Kumano Maru.
En Route to China.

The lecture yesterday was a success, go-
ing off rather better than the others. It was
in a school hall and they are always beauti-
ful rooms. I was entertained during its
two hours of duration by watching a splen-
did pink azalea and a pine on either side
of the desk. They are each about five feet
high and of the most lovely shape, and there
were about a thousand blossoms on this
azalea. We know but very little about
dwarfed trees and shrubs in our country as
the specimens we see are very small ones
and inferior in shape and interest to those
we see here. They are everywhere, each
little shop has in the midst of its mess of
second hand or cheap new things a charm-
ing little peach or plum, pine, azalea, or
redberry. In a hot house we saw a tree

144 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

that had two plums on it, and we frequently
see tiny orange trees covered with fruit.
The white peach is one of the loveliest
things in the world, double blossoms like
roses, and is entirely artificially produced.

The smoke has lifted and we are seeing
the hills of the shore very well. On the
other side of the ship we see the Island
of Awaji, so we are now between the two
islands and it is much like the Thousand
Islands in the St. Lawrence River. I sup-
pose this is the entrance to the Inland Sea.
It is partly clear and the land is so close it
is easy to see. There are many Japanese
ladies on board with their husbands and
they seem to enjoy it. With their faces
white with rice powder and their purple
color in their haoris they are pretty, and
especially here where they do not feel the
necessity of covering the obi with haori so
they look less humpbacked than in fashion-
able Tokyo. Their footwear I love, only,
of course, it holds them still more to the

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 145

conventional position as it leaves the legs
bare above the ankle, and they must walk
so as not to show that as well as not to dis-
turb the lap of the kimona down the front.
But the tabi feel like bare feet on account
of the division of the big toe from the other
toes, and as soon as you put them on you
feel as if the toes were really made to use,
and the foot clings as you walk. I am tak-
ing a set of cotton kimonas to China so as
to have them to wear in my room with the
tabi on hot days. Without the obi the dress
becomes quite cool if made of thin mate-
rial. The thin silk, which is practically
transparent, is one of the most beautiful
things in Japanese weaving, as it is still firm
enough to keep its shape and wear for years.
The dress of the geisha is very like the
ceremonial dress of the lady, especially
when black with decorations at the bottom.
The little girls are very touching, many of
them are not over eight or nine, and they
wear the elaborate dress and coiffure which

146 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

is theirs for the part. In cherry season It
is bright peacock blue. In Osaka the deco-
rations were butterflies in colors and gold.
The samisen players are older and they
dress more plainly in black or plain blue,
the drum players are young and gay colored.
The teeth of the little girls are so bad that
I asked if they blackened them. The dances
are lovely poetical things with themes of the
most delicate subjects. There is never any-
thing coarse either in the thought or the
execution. They say the geisha is the most
unselfish person in the world. Perhaps that
might be said for all the women. They do
their hard work and keep themselves out
of sight to a degree that shows the pain
there must be in it. When I was asked what
I thought of them I answered that I thought
Japanese women were not appreciated for
what they did. They said, "No, that is not
so, we do not show it but we appreciate them
in our hearts."

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 147

SHANGHAI, May 1.

We have slept one night in China, but
we haven't any first impressions, because
China hasn't revealed itself to our eyes as
yet. We compared Shanghai to Detroit,
Michigan, and except that there is less coal
smoke, the description hits it off. This is
said to be literally an international city, but
I haven't learned yet just what the tech-
nique is; every country seems to have its
own post office though, and its own front-
door yard, and when we were given a little
auto ride yesterday, we found that the car
couldn't go into Chinatown because it had
no license for that district.

I shall be interested to find out whether
in this really old country they talk about
"ages eternal" as freely as they do in Japan;
the authentic history of the latter begins
about 500 A.D., their mythical history 500

148 LETTERS FROM CHIJsTA AND JAPAN

B.C., but still it is a country which has en-
dured during myriads of ages. In spite of
the fact that they kept the emperors shut
up for a thousand years, and killed them
off and changed them about with great ease
and complacency, the children are all
taught, and they repeat in books for for-
eigners, that the rule of Japan has been
absolutely unbroken. Of course, they get
to believing these things themselves, not
exactly intellectually but emotionally and
practically, and it would be worth any
teacher's position for him to question any
of their patriotic legends in print. How-
ever, they say that in their oral lectures, the
professors of history of the universities
criticise these legends. In the higher ele-
mentary school we visited in Osaka, we saw
five classes in history and ethics, in each of
which the Emperor was under discussion —
sometimes the Emperor and what he had
done for the country, and sometimes an
Emperor in particular. Apparently this

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 149

religion has been somewhat of a necessity,
as the country was so divided and split up,
they had practically nothing else to unite
on — the Emperor became a kind of symbol
of united and modern Japan. But this wor-
ship is going to be an Old Man of the Sea
on their backs. They say the elementary
school teachers are about the most fanatical
patriots of the country. More than one has
been burned or allowed the children to be
burned while he rescued the portrait of the
Emperor when there was a fire. They must
take it out in patriotism in lieu of salary;
they don't get a living wage, now that the
cost of living has gone up.

150 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

SHANGHAI, May 2.

We have been taken in hand by a recep-
tion committee of several Chinese gentle-
men, mostly returned American students.
The "returned student" is a definite cate-
gory here, and if and when China gets on
its feet, the American university will have
a fair share of the glory to its credit. They
took us to see a Chinese cotton spinning and
weaving factory. There is not even the
pretense at labor laws here that there is in
Japan. Children six years of age are em-
ployed, not many though, and the wages of
the operatives in the spinning department,
mainly women, is thirty cents a day, at the
highest thirty-two cents Mex. In the weav-
ing department they have piece work and
get up to forty cents.

I will tell you something of what we had
to eat in one small afternoon. First, lunch
of all courses here at the hotel. Then we

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 151

went to the newspaper where we had tea
and cake at about four. From there to the
house of the daughter of a leading states-
man of the Manchus, she being a lady of
small feet and ten children, who has offered
a prize for the best essay on the ways to
stop concubinage, which they call the whole
system of plural marriage. They say it is
quite unchanged among the rich. There we
were given a tea of a rare sort, unknown in
our experience. Two kinds of meat pies
which are made in the form of little cakes
and quite peculiar in taste, delicious; also
cake. Then after we went to the restaurant
where we were to have dinner. First we
got into the wrong hotel and there, while
we were waiting, they gave us tea. We
were struck by the fact that they asked for
nothing when we left, and thanked us for
coming to the wrong place. Then we went
to the right hotel across the street from the
first. They called it the corner of Broad-
way and 42nd Street, and it is that. There

152 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

is a big roof garden besides the hotels, and
they are both run by the Department stores
which have their places underneath. It may
be a sad commentary on the human char-
acter that one can eat more than one can
remember, but that is what we did last
night. First of all we went into the room
which was all Chinese furniture; very small
round table in the middle and the rows of
stools along one side for the singing girls,
who do not dance here. Those stools were
not used, as all the young Chinese are
ashamed of that institution and want to
get rid of it. On a side table were almonds
shelled, nice little ones, different from ours
and very sweet. Beside them were dried
watermelon seeds which were hard to crack
and so I did not taste them. All the
Chinese nibbled them with relish. Two
ladies came, both of them had been in New
York to study. All these people speak and
understand English in earnest. On the
table were little pieces of sliced ham, the

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 153

famous preserved eggs which taste like hard-
boiled eggs and look like dark-colored
jelly, and little dishes of sweets, shrimps,
etc. To these we helped ourselves with the
chop sticks, though they insisted on giving
us little plates on which they spooned out
some of each. Then followed such a feast
as we had never experienced, the boys tak-
ing off one dish after another and replacing
them with others in the center of the table,
to which we helped ourselves. There was
no special attempt at display of fine dishes
such as you might have expected with such
cooking and such expense, and such as
would have happened in Japan. We had
chicken and duck and pigeon and veal and
pigeon eggs and soup and fish and little
oysters that grow in the ground (very de-
licious and delicate) and nice little vege-
tables and bamboo sprouts mixed in with
the others, and we had shrimps cooked, and
shark's fin and bird's nest (this has no taste
at all and is a sort of very delicate soup,

154 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

but costs a fortune and that is its real reason
for being) . It is gelatine which almost all
dissolves in the cooking. We had many
more things than these, and the boy in a
dirty white coat and an old cap on his head
passing round the hot perfumed wet towels
every few courses, and for dessert we had
little cakes made of bean paste filled up
with almond paste and other sweets, all very
elaborately made, and works of art to look
at, but with too little taste to appeal much
to us; then we had fruits, bananas and
apples and pears, cut up in pieces, each with
a toothpick in it so it can be eaten easily.
T* .en we had a soup made of fish's stomach,
or air sac. Then we had a pudding of the
most delicious sort imaginable, made of a
mold of rice filled in with eight different
symbolic things that I don't know anything
about, but they don't cut much part in the
taste. In serving this dish we were first
given a little bowl half full of a sauce thick-
ened and looking like a milk sauce. It was

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 155

really made of powdered almonds. Into
this you put the pudding, and it is so good
that I regretted all that had gone before,
and I am going to learn how to make it.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

SHANGHAI, May 3.

Some one told us when we were on the
boat that the Japanese cared everything for
what people thought of them, and the
Chinese cared nothing. Making compari-
sons is a favorite, if dangerous, indoor sport.
The Chinese are noisy, not to say boister-
ous, easy-going and dirty — and quite human
in general effect. They are much bigger
than the Japanese, and frequently very
handsome from any point of view. The
most surprising thing is the number of those
who look not merely intelligent but intel-
lectual among the laborers, such as some of
the hotel waiters and attendants. Our
waiter is a rather feminine, ultra refined
type, and might be a poet. I noticed quite
a number of the same Latin quarter Paris
type of artists among the teachers whom I
addressed to-day. The Japanese impres-

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 157

sions are gradually sinking into perspective
with distance, and it is easy to see that the
same qualities that make them admirable
are also the ones that irritate you. That
they should have made what they have out
of that little and mountainous island is one
of the wonders of the world, but everything
in themselves is a little overmade, there
seems to be a rule for everything, and ad-
miring their artistic effects one also sees how
near art and the artificial are together. So
it is something of a relaxation to get among
the easy-going once more. Their slouchi-
ness, however, will in the end get on one's
nerves quite as much as the "eternal" at-
tention of the Japanese. One more general-
ization borrowed from one of our Chinese
friends here, and I'm done. "The East
economizes space and the West time" — that
also is much truer than most epigrams.

158 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

SHANGHAI, May 4.

I have seen a Chinese lady, small feet and
all. We took dinner with her. She did not
come into the room until after dinner was
over, having been in the kitchen cooking it
while the servant brought things in. She
has one of those placid faces which are
round and plump and quite beautiful in a
way, a pretty complexion, and of course a
slow, rocking, hobbling way of walking.
Yesterday after the lecture we went there
again and she showed us all over her flat.
It is well kept, with not many conveniences
from our point of view, but I think it is
regarded as quite modern here. It has a
staircase, and a little roof where they dry
clothes or sit. The bath is a tin tub, warmed
by carrying water from the little stove like
our little laundry stoves. It has an outlet
pipe to the ground, no sewers as usual in

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 159

the Orient. The kitchen has a little stove
of iron set up on boxes and they burn small
pieces of wood. It has three compartments,
two big shallow iron pots for roasting and
boiling and a deep one in the middle for
keeping the hot water for tea. Only two
fires are needed as the heat from the two
end fires does for the water in the middle.

There is no doubt that the Chinese are a
sociable people if given a chance. Of course,
men like the husband of our hostess are the
extreme of ability and advanced ideas here.
But it is remarkable that he shows us things
as they are. When we visited schools he
did not arrange in advance because he did
not want us to sec a fixed up program.
When we went out to lunch he took us to
a Chinese place where no foreigners ever go.

Yesterday we went to a department store
to buy some gloves and garters. Gloves
were Keyser's, imported, so were the
stockings, so were the garters and sus-
penders, etc. The gloves were from $1 to

160 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

$1.60 and the suspenders were a dollar. I
bought some silk, sixteen inches wide, for
fifty cents a yard. The store was messy
and the floors dirty, but it is a popular place
for the Chinese. We paid three dollars for
a book marked Ish. 6p. in England, and
everything here is like that. Gloves and
stockings are made in Japan, and good
and cheap there; fine silken stockings $1.60
a pair. But still the Chinese do not buy
of them, but from America. We have
visited a cotton mill. The Chinese cotton
and silk are now inferior, owing to lack of
scientific production and of proper care of
seed. In weaving, they sometimes mix their
cotton with ours.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 161

SHANGHAI, Monday, May 12.

Tbe Peking tempest seems to have sub-
sided for the present, the Chancellor still
holding the fort, and the students being re-
leased. The subsidized press said this was
due in part to the request of the Japanese
that the school-boy pranks be looked upon
indulgently. According to the papers, the
Japanese boycott is spreading, but the ones
we see doubt if the people will hold out long
enough — meanwhile Japanese money is re-
fused here.

The East is an example of what mascu-
line civilization can be and do. The trouble
I should say is that the discussions have
been confined to the subjection of the
women as if that were a thing affecting the
women only. It is my conviction that not
merely the domestic and educational back-

162 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

wardness of China, but the increasing physi-
cal degeneration and the universal political
corruption and lack of public spirit, which
make China such an easy mark, is the result
of the condition of women. There is the
same corruption in Japan only it is organ-
ized; there seems to be an alliance between
two groups of big capitalists and the two
leading political "parties." There the very
great public spirit is nationalistic rather
than social, that is, it is patriotism rather
than public spirit as we understand it. So
while Japan is strong where China is weak,
there are corresponding defects there be-
cause of the submission of women — and the
time will come when the hidden weakness
will break Japan down. Here are two items
from the Chinese side. A missionary spoke
to Christian Chinese about spending the
time Sunday, making chiefly the point that
it was a good time for family reunions and
family readings, conversation and the like.
One of them said that they would be bored

-

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 163

to death if they had to spend the whole day
with their wives. Then we are told that the
rich women — who have of course much less
liberty in getting out than the poorer class y
women — spend their time among themselves
gambling. It is universally believed that
the attempt to support a number of wives
extravagantly is one of the chief sources of J
political corruption. On the other Hand, at
one of the political protest meetings in
Peking a committee of twelve was ap-
pointed to go to the officials and four of
them were women. In Japan women are
forbidden to attend any meetings where
politics are discussed, and the law is strictly
enforced. There are many more Chinese
women studying in America than there are
Japanese — in part, perhaps, because of the
lack of higher schools for girls here, but also
because they don't have to give up marriage
here when they get an education — in fact
we are told they are in especial demand not
only among the men who have studied

164 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

abroad, but among the millionaires. Cer-
tainly the educated ones here are much more
advanced on the woman question than in
Japan.

"You never can tell" is the coat of arms
of China. The Chancellor of the University
was forced out on the evening of the eighth
by the cabinet, practically under threat of
assassination; also soldiers (bandits) were
brought into the city and the University sur-
rounded, so to save the University rather
than himself, he left — nobody knows where.
The release of the students was sent out by
telegraph, but they refused to allow this to
become known. It seems this Chancellor
was more the intellectual leader of the lib-
erals than I had realized, and the govern-
ment had become really afraid of him. He
has only been there two years, and before
that the students had never demonstrated
politically and now they are the leaders of
the new movement. So of course the gov-
ernment will put in a reactionary, and the

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 165

students will leave and all the honest teach-
ers resign. Perhaps the students will go
on strike all over China. But you never
can tell.

166 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

Tuesday A.M.

Ex-President Sun Yat Sen is a philoso-
pher, as I found out last night during dinner
with him. He has written a book, to be
published soon, saying that the weakness of
the Chinese is due to their acceptance of the
statement of an old philosopher, "To know
is easy, to act is difficult." Consequently
they did not like to act and thought it was
possible to get a complete theoretical un-
derstanding, while the strength of the Jap-
anese was that they acted even in ignorance
and went ahead and learned by their mis-
takes; the Chinese were paralyzed by fear
of making a mistake in action. So he has
written a book to prove to his people that
action is really easier than knowledge.

The American sentiment here hopes that
the Senate will reject the treaty because it
virtually completes the turning over of

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 167

China to Japan. I will only mention two
things said in the conversation. Japan
already has more troops, namely twenty-
three divisions, under arms in China than
she has in Japan, Japanese officered Chi-
nese, and her possession of Manchurian
China is already complete. They have lent
China two hundred millions to be used in
developing this army and extending it.
They offered China, according to the con-
versation at dinner, to lend her two million
a month for twenty years for military pur-
poses. Japan figured the war would last till
'21 or '22, and had proposed an offensive
and defensive alliance to Germany, Japan
to supply its trained Chinese army, and
Germany to turn over to Japan the Allies'
concessions and colonies in China. As an
evidence of good faith, Germany had
already offered to Japan its own Chinese
territory, and it was the communication of
this fact to Great Britain which induced the
latter to sign the secret pact agreeing to

168 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

turn over German possessions to Japan,
when the peace was made. These men are
not jingoists; they think they know what
they are talking about, and they have good
sources of knowledge. Some of these state-
ments are known facts — like the size of the
army and the two hundred million loan —
but of course I can't guarantee them. But
I'm coming to the opinion that it might be
well worth while to reject the treaty on the
ground that it involved the recognition of
secret treaties and secret diplomacy. On the
other hand, a genuine League of Nations
* — one with some vigor — is the only salvation
I can see of the whole Eastern situation, and
it is infinitely more serious than we realize
at home. If things drift on five or ten years
more, the world will have a China under
Japanese military domination — barring two
things — Japan will collapse in the meantime
under the strain, or Asia will be completely
Bolshevikized, which I think is about fifty-
fifty with a Japanized-Militarized China.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 169

European diplomacy here, which of course
dominates America, is completely futile.
England does everything with reference to
India, and they all temporize and drift and /
take what are called optimistic long-run
views and quarrel among themselves, and
Japan alone knows what it wants and comes
after it.

I still believe in the genuineness of the
Japanese liberal movement there, but they
lack moral courage. They, the intellectual
liberals, are almost as ignorant of the true
facts as we are, and enough aware of them
to wish to keep themselves in ignorance.
Then there is the great patriotism, which of
course easily justifies, by the predatory ex-
ample of the Europeans, the idea that this is
all in self-defense.

170 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

SHANGHAI, May 13.

I closed up abruptly because there seemed
a possibility of mail going out and now it
is a day after and more to tell, with a pros-
pect of little time to tell it. China is full
of unused resources and there are too many
people. The factories begin to work at six
or earlier in the morning, with not enough
for the poor to do, and they have the habit
of not wanting to work much. Two shifts
work in factories for the twenty-four hours.
They get about twenty to thirty cents a day
and the little children get from nothing up
to nine cents, or even eleven cents after they
get older. Iron mines are idle, coal and oil
undeveloped, and they cannot get railroads.
They burn their wood everywhere and the
country is withering away because it is de-
forested. They made the porcelain industry

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 171

for the world and they buy their table dishes
from Japan. They raise a deteriorated cot-
ton and buy cotton cloth from Japan. They
buy any quantity of small useful articles
from Japan. Japanese are in every town
across China like a network closing in on
fishes.

All the mineral resources of China are the
prey of the Japanese, and they have secured
80 per cent of them by bribery of the Pe-
king government. Talk to a Chinese and
he will tell you that China cannot develop
because she has no transportation facilities.
Talk to him about building railroads and he
tells you China ought to have railroads but
she cannot build them because she cannot
get the material. Talk to him about fuel
when you see all the weeds being gathered
from the roadsides for burning in the cook
stoves, and he tells you China cannot use
her mines because of the government's in-
terference. There are large coal mines
within ten miles of this city with the coal

172 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

lying near the surface and only the Japan-
ese are using them, though they are right on
the bank of the Yangste River. The iron
mines referred to are near the river, a whole
mountain of iron being worked by the
Japanese, who bring the ocean ships up the
river, load them directly from the mines, the
ore being carried down the hill, and take
these ships directly to Japan, and they pay
four dollars a ton to the Chinese company
which carries on all the work'.

The last hope of China for an effective
government passed away with the closing
of the Peace Conference, which has been
working hard here for weeks. It seems the
delegates from the south could act with
plenary power. The delegates from the
north had to refer everything to the military
ministers from Peking, and so at last they
gave up. Despair is deeper than ever, and
they all say that nothing can be done. We
have gone round recommending many ways
of getting at the wrong impressions that

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 173

prevail in our country about them, such as
propaganda, an insistence upon the explan-
ation of the differences between the people
and the government. But the reply is, "We
can do nothing, we have no money." Cer-
tainly the Chinese pride has been grounded
now. An American official here says there
is no hope for China except through the pro-
tection of the great powers, in which Japan
must join. Without that she is the prey of
Japan. Japanese are buying best bits of
land in this city for business, and in other
cities. Japan borrows money from other
nations and then loans it to China on bleed-
ing terms. The cession of Shantung has, of
course, precipitated the whole mess and
some Chinese think that is their last hope
to so reduce them to the last extremity that
rage will bring them to act. The boycott of
Japanese goods and money has begun, but
many say it will not be persistently carried
out. The need for food and clothes in China
keeps everybody bound by the struggle for

174 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

a livelihood, and everything else has to be
forgotten in the long run.

The protests of the Faculty on behalf of
the students seem to have been received by
the government in good part. Students
here are in trouble also to some extent and
there is a probability of a strike of students
in all the colleges and middle schools of the
country. The story at St. John's here is
very interesting. It is the Episcopalian
mission school, and one of the best. Stu-
dents walked to Shanghai, ten miles, on the
hottest day to parade, then ten miles back.
Some of them fell by the way with sun-
stroke. On their return in the evening they
found some of the younger students going
in to a concert. The day was a holiday,
called the Day of Humiliation. It is the
anniversary of the date of the twenty-one
demands of Japan, and is observed by all
the schools. It is a day of general meetings
and speechmaking for China. These stu-
dents stood outside of the door where the

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 175

concert was to be held and their principal
came out and told them they must go to the
concert. They replied that they were pray-
ing there, as it was not a time for celebrat-
ing by a concert on the Day of Humiliation.
Then they were ordered to go in first by this
principal and afterwards by the President
of the whole college. Considerable excite-
ment was the result. Students said they
were watching there for the sake of China as
the apostles prayed at the death of Christ
and this anniversary was like the anniver-
sary of the death of Christ. The President
told them if they did not go in then he
would shut them out of the college. This
he did. They stood there till morning and
then one of them who lived nearby took
them into his house. Therefore St. John's
College is closed and the President has not
given in.

I fancy the Chinese would be almost
ready to treat the Japanese as they did the
treacherous minister if it were not for the

176 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

reaction it would have on the world at large.
They do hate them and the Americans we
have met all seem to feel with them. Cer-
tainly the apparent lie of the Japanese when
they made their splurge in promising before
the sitting of the Peace Conference to give
back the German concessions to China is
something America ought not to forget. All
these, and the extreme poverty of China is
what I had no idea of before coming here.

A wonderfully solemn and intent old
pedlar has made his appearance most every
day, and much the same ceremonies are gone
through. For instance, there was a bead
necklace — the light hollowed silver enamel
— he wanted fourteen dollars for; he seemed
rather glad finally to sell it for four, though
you can't say he seemed glad; on the con-
trary, he seemed preternaturally gloomy
and remarked that he and not we would eat
bitterness because of this purchase. The
funniest thing was once when, after getting
sick of bargaining, we put the whole thing

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 177

down and started to walk away. His move-
ments and gestures would have made an
actor celebrated — they are indescribable,
but they said in effect, "Rather than have
any misunderstanding come between me
and my close personal friends I would give
you free anything in my possession." The
blood rushed to his face and a smile of
heavenly benignity came over it as he
handed us the things at the price we had
offered him.

The students' committees met yesterday
and voted to inform the government by tele-
graph that they would strike next Monday
if their four famous demands were not
granted — or else five — including of course re-
fusal to sign the peace treaty, punishment of
traitors who made the secret treaties with
Japan because they were bribed, etc. But
the committee seemed to me more conserva-
tive than the students, for the rumor this
A.M. is that they are going to strike to-day
anyway. They are especially angered be-

178 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

cause the police have forbidden them to hold
open-air meetings — that's now the subject
of one of their demands — and because the
provincial legislature, after promising to
help on education, raised their own salaries
and took the money to do it with out of the
small educational fund. In another district
the students rioted and rough-housed the
legislative hall when this happened. Here
there was a protest committee, but the stu-
dents are mad and want action. Some of
the teachers, so far as I can judge, quite
sympathize with the boys, not only in their
ends but in their methods; some think it
their moral duty to urge deliberate action
and try to make the students as organized
and systematic as possible, and some take
the good old Chinese ground that there is
no certainty that any good will come of it.
To the outsider it looks as if the babes and
sucklings who have no experience and no
precedents would have to save China — if.
And it's an awful if. It's not surprising

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 179

that the Japanese with their energy and
positiveness feel that they are predestined to
govern China.

I didn't ever expect to be a jingo, But
either the United States ought to wash its
hands entirely of the Eastern question, and
say "it's none of our business, fix it up your-
self any way you like," or else it ought to be
as positive and aggressive in calling Japan
to account for every aggressive move she
makes, as Japan is in doing them. It is
sickening that we allow Japan to keep us
on the defensive and the explanatory, and
talk about the open door, when Japan has
locked most of the doors in China already
and got the keys in her pocket. I under-
stand and believe what all Americans say
here — the military party that controls
Japan's foreign policy in China regards
everything but positive action, prepared to
back itself by force, as fear and weakness,
and is only emboldened to go still further.
Met by force, she would back down. I don't

180 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

mean military force, but definite positive
statements about what she couldn't do that
she knew meant business. At the present
time the Japanese are trying to stir up anti-
foreign feeling and make the Chinese be-
lieve the Americans and English are respon-
sible for China not getting Shantung back,
and also talking race discrimination for the
same purpose. I don't know what effect
their emissaries are having among the igno-
rant, but the merchant class has about got
to the point of asking foreign intervention
to straighten things out — first to loosen the
clutch of Japan, and then, or at the same
time, for it's the two sides of the same thing,
overthrow the corrupt military clique that
now governs China and sells it out. It's
a wonderful job for a League of Nations —
if only by any chance there is a league, which
looks most dubious at this distance.

The question which is asked oftenest by
the students is in effect this: "All of our
hopes of permanent peace and international-

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 181

ism having been disappointed at Paris,
which has shown that might still makes
right, and that the strong nations get what
they want at the expense of the weak, should
not China adopt militarism as part of her
educational system?"

182 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

NANKING, May 18.

There is no doubt we are in China.
Hangchow, we are told, was one of the most
prosperous of the strictly Chinese cities, and
after seeing this town we can believe it. It
has a big wall around it, said to be 21 miles
and also 33 — my guess is the latter; none-
theless there are hundreds of acres of farm
within it. This afternoon we were taken up
on the wall; it varies from 15 to 79 feet in
height, according to the lay of the ground,
and from 12 to 30 feet or so wide; hard
baked brick, about as large as three of ours.
They always had a smaller walled city inside
the big one, variously called the Imperial
and Manchu city. But since the revolution
they are tearing down these inner walls,
partly I suppose to show their contempt for
the Manchus, and partly to use the brick.
These are sold for three or four cents apiece

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 183

and carted all around on the big Chinese
wheelbarrow, by man power, of course. The
compound wall of this house is made of
them, and they have several thousand of
them stored at the University grounds. They
scrape them off by hand; you can get some
idea of the relative yalue of material and
human beings. I started out to speak of
the view — typical China, deforested hills
close by, all pockmarked at the bottom with
graves, like animal burrows and golf bunk-
ers; peasants' stone houses with thatched
roofs, looking like Ireland or France;
orchards of pomegranates with lovely scar-
let blossoms and other f riuts ; some rice fields
already growing, others being set out, ten
or a dozen people at work in one patch; gar-
den patches, largely melons; in the distance
the wall stretching out for miles, a hill with
a pagoda, a lotus lake, and in the far dis-
tance the blue mountains — also the city, not
so much of which was visible, however.
One of the interesting things in moving

184 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

about is the fact that only once in a while
do I see a face typically Chinese. I forget
they are Chinese a great deal of the time.
They just seem like dirty, poor miserable
people anywhere. They are cheerful but
not playful. I should like to give a few
millions for playgrounds and toys and play
leaders. I can't but think that a great deal
of the lack of initiative and the let-George-
do-it, which is the curse of China, is con-
nected with the fact that the children are
grown up so soon. There are less than a
hundred schools for children in this city of
a third of a million, and the schools only
have a few hundred — two or three at most.
The children on the street are always just
looking and watching, wise, human looking,
and reasonably cheerful, but old and serious
beyond bearing. Of course many are work-
ing at the loom, or when they are younger
at reeling. This is a good deal of a silk
place, and we visited one government fac-
tory with several hundred people at work;

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 185

this one at least makes out to Be self-sup-
porting. There isn't a power reeler or loom
in the town, nor yet a loom of the Jacquard
type. Sometimes a boy sits up top and
shifts things, sometimes they have six or
eight foot treadles. A lot of the reeling isn't
even foot power — just hand^ though their
hand reeler is much more ingenious than the
Japanese one. There seem so many places
to take hold and improve things and yet all
of these are so tied together, and change is
so hard that it isn't much wonder everybody
who stays here gets more or less Chinafied
and takes it out in liking the Chinese per-
sonally for their amiable qualities.

Just now the students are forming a
patriotic league because of the present po-
litical situation, Japanese boycott, etc. But
the teachers of the Nanking University here
say that instead of contenting themselves
with the two or three things they might well
do, they are laying out an ambitious scheme
covering everything, and their energy will

186 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

be exhausted when they get their elaborate
constitution formed, or they will meet so
many difficulties that they will get discour-
aged even with the things they might do. I
don't know whether I told you about the
clerk in the tailor shop in Shanghai; after
taking the usual fatalistic attitude that
nothing could be done with the present sit-
uation, he said the boycott was a good thing
but "Chinaman he got weak mind; pretty
soon he forget."

In various places there are lots of straw
hats hung up painted in Chinese characters
where they have stopped passersby and
taken their hats away because they were
Japanese made. It is all good natured and
nobody objects. There are policemen in
front of Japanese stores, and they allow no
one to enter; they are "protecting" the
Japanese. This is characteristic of China.
The policemen all carry guns with bayonets
attached; they are very numerous and
slouch around looking bored to death. The

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 187

only other class as bored looking is the dogs,
which are even more numerous, and lie
stretched out at full length, never curled up,
and never by any chance doing anything.

We visited the old examination halls
which are now being torn down. These
are the cells, about 25,000 in number, where
the candidates for degrees used to be shut
up during the examination period. Said
cells are built in long rows, under a lean-to
roof, mostly opening face to face on an open
corridor, which is uncovered. Some of them
face against a wall which is the back of
the next row of cells. Cells are two and
one-half feet wide by four long. In them
are two ridges along the wall on each side,
one at the height of a seat, the other at the
height of a table. On these they laid two
boards, two and a half feet long, and this
was their furniture. They sat and wrote
and cooked and ate and slept in these cells.
In case it did not rain, their feet could stick
out into the corridor so they might stretch

183 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

out on the hard floor. The exams lasted
eight days, divided into three divisions.
They went in on the eighth day of the
eighth moon in the evening. They wrote the
first subject until the afternoon of the tenth.
Then they left for the night. On the after-
noon of the eleventh they came in for the
second subject and wrote till the afternoon
of the thirteenth, when there was another day
off. On the evening of the fourteenth they
re-entered the cell for the third period and
that ended on the evening of the sixteenth.
They had free communication with each
other in the corridors, which were closed and
locked. No one could approach them from
the outside for any reason. Often they died.
But if they could only get put into a cor-
ridor with a friend who knew, the biggest
fool in China could get his paper written
for him, and he could pass and become an
M. A., or something corresponding to that
degree. Thus were the famous literati of
China produced. Preparation for the exam

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 189

was not the affair of the government, and
might be acquired in any possible way.
The houses of the examiners are still in
good condition and might be made into a
school very easily. But do you think they
will do that? Not at all. The government
has not ordered a school there, and so they
will be torn down or else used for some offi-
cial work. You can have no conception of
how far the officialism goes till you see it.
We also visited a Confucian Temple, big
and used twice each year. It is like all
temples in that it is covered with the dust
of many years' accumulation. If you were
to be dropped in any Chinese temple you
would think you had landed in a deserted
and forgotten ruin out of reach of man.
We went to the Temple of Hell on Sun-
day, and the gentleman who accompanied
us suggested to the priest that the images
ought to be dusted off. "Yes," said the
priest, "it would be better if they were."

190 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

NANKING, Thursday, May 22.

The returned students from Japan hate
Japan, but they are all at loggers with the
returned students from America, and their
separate organizations cannot get together.
Many returned students have no jobs, ap-
parently because they will not go into busi-
ness or begin at the bottom anywhere, and
there is strong hostility against them on the
part of the officials.

As a sample of the way business is done
here, we have just had an express letter
from Shanghai which took four days to
arrive. It should arrive in twelve hours.
People use express letters rather than the
telegraph because they are quicker. You
may spend as much time as you like or
don't like, wondering why your express
letter did not reach you on time; you do it
at your own risk and expense. The Chinese

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 191

do not juggle with foreigners as the Japa-
nese do, in the conscious sense, they simply
drift, they juggle with themselves and with
each other all the time.

This house is four miles from the railroad
station. There is no street car here; there
are many 'rickshas, a few carriages, still
fewer autos. There are no sedan chairs, at
least I don't remember seeing any, but at
Chienkiang, where we went the other day,
the streets are so narrow that chairs are the
main means of conveyance. The 'ricksha
men here pay forty cents a day to the city
for their vehicles, which are all alike and
very poor ones. They make a little more
than that sum for themselves. In Shanghai
they pay ninety cents a day for their right
to work, and earn from one dollar to a pos-
sible dollar and a half for themselves.

I said to a young professor, the other
day, that China was still supporting three
idle classes of people. He looked surprised,
though a student and critic of social condi-

192 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

tions, and asked me who they were. When
I asked him if that couldn't be said of the
officials, the priests, and the army, he said
yes, it could. Thus far and no further,
seems to be their motto, both in thinking
and acting, especially in acting.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 193

NANKING, May 23.

I don't believe anybody knows what the
political prospects are; this students' move-
ment has introduced a new and uncalcul-
able factor — and all in the three weeks we
have been here. You heard nothing but
gloom about political China at first, corrupt
and traitorous officials, soldiers only paid
banditti, the officers getting the money from
Japan to pay them with, no organizing
power or cohesion among the Chinese; and
then the students take things into their
hands, and there is animation and a sudden
buzz. There are a hundred students being
coached here to go out and make speeches,
they will have a hundred different stations
scattered through the city. It is also said
the soldiers are responding to the patriotic
propaganda; a man told us that the soldiers

194 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

wept when some students talked to them
about the troubles of China, and the soldiers
of Shantung, the province turned over to
Japan, have taken the lead in telegraphing
the soldiers in the other provinces to resist
the corrupt traitors. Of course, what they
all are afraid of is that this is a flash in the
pan, but they are already planning to make
the student movement permanent and to
find something for them to do after this is
settled. Their idea here is to reorganize
them for popular propaganda for education,
more schools, teaching adults, social service,
etc.

It is very interesting to compare the men
who have been abroad with those who
haven't — I mean students and teachers.
Those who haven't are sort of helpless,
practically; the height of literary and
academic minds. Those who have studied
abroad, even in Japan, have much more go
to them. Certainly the classicists in educa-
tion have a noble example here in China of

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 195

what their style of education can do if only
kept up long enough. On the other hand,
there must be something esthetically very
fine in the old Chinese literature; even
many of the modern young men have a
sentimental attachment to it, precisely like
that which they have to the fine writing of
their characters. They talk about them
with all the art jargon: "Notice the
strength of this down stroke, and the
spirituality of the cross stroke and elegant
rhythm of the composition." When we
visited a temple the other day, one of the
chief Buddhist shrines in China, we were
presented with a rubbing of the writing of
the man who is said to be the finest writer
ever known in China — these characters were
engraved in the rock from his writing some
centuries ago — I don't know how many. It
is very easy to see how cultivated people
take refuge in art and spirituality when
politics are corrupt and the general state of
social life is discouraging; you see it here,

196 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

and how in the end it increases the de-
cadence.

I think we wrote you from Shanghai that
we had been introduced to all the mys-
teries of China, ancient eggs, sharks' fins,
birds' nests, pigeon eggs, the eight pre-
cious treasures, rice pudding, and so on.
We continue to have Chinese meals; yes-
terday lunch in the home of an adviser to
a military official. He is very outspoken,
doesn't trim in politics, and gives you a
more hopeful feeling about China. The
most depressing thing is hearing it said,
"When we get a stable government, we can
do so and so, but there is no use at present."
But this man's attitude is rather, "Damn
the government and go ahead and do some-
thing." He is very proud of having a
"happy, Christian home" and doesn't cover
up his Christianity as most of the official
and wealthy class seem to do. He expects
to have his daughters educated in America,
one in medicine and one in home affairs, and

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 197

to have help in a campaign for changing
the character of the Chinese home — from
these big aggregates of fifty people or so
living together, married children, servants,
etc., where he says the waste is enormous,
to say nothing of bickerings and jealousies.
In the old type of well-to-do home, break-
fast would begin for someone about seven,
and someone would have cooking done for
him to eat till noon ; then about two, visitors
would come, and the servants would be
ordered to cook something for each caller —
absolutely no organization or planning in
anything, according to him,

198 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

NANKING, Monday, May 26.

The trouble among the students is daily
getting worse, and even the most sympa-
thetic among the faculties are getting more
and more anxious. The governor of this
province, capital here, is thought most
liberal, and he has promised to support these
advanced measures in education. Last
Friday the assembly passed a bill cutting
down the educational appropriation and
raising their own salaries. Therefore the
students here are now all stirred up and the
faculties are afraid they cannot be kept in
control until they are well enough organ-
ized to make a strike effective. At the same
time our friends are kept busy running up
to the assembly and the governor. The
latter has promised to veto the bill when it
is sent to him from the senate. But the
students are getting anxious to go to the

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 199

senate themselves. Our friends say it costs
so much for these men to get elected that
they have to get it all back after they get
into office. A missionary says: "Let's go
out and shoot them all, they are just as
bad as Peking, and if they had the same
chance they would sell out the whole coun-
try to Japan or to anyone else." Certainly
China needs education all along the line,
but they never will get it as long as they
try in little bits. So maybe they will have
to be pushed to the very bottom before they
will be ready to go the whole hog or none.
Yesterday a Chinese lady had a tea for
me and asked the Taitai, as the wives of the
officials are called, corresponding to the
court ladies of previous times. As a func-
tion this was interesting, for every woman
brought her servant and most of her chil-
dren. Some appeared to have two servants,
one big-footed maid for herself and one
bound-footed as a nurse for the children.
Her own servant hands her the cup of tea.

200 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

All the children are fed at the same time as
the grown-ups, and after their superiors the
servants get something in the kitchen. I
don't know yet what that something is, but
probably an inferior tea. The tea we drank
is that famous jasmine tea from Hang-
chow. It costs something like fifteen dol-
lars a pound here. It is very good, with a
peculiar spicy flavor, almost musky and
smoky, from the jasmine combined with the
tea flavor, which is strong. It is a delicious
brown tea, but I do not like to drink it so
well as I lit 2 the best green tea.

Well, I wish you could see the Taitai.
The wife of the governor is about twenty-
five, or may be a little more. She is a sub-
stantial young person, with full-grown feet,
a pale blue dress of skirt and coat scalloped
on the edges and bound with black satin,
her nice hair parted to one side on the right
and pinned above her left ear with a white
artificial rose. Her maid had black coat
and trousers. She had some bracelets on,

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 201

but her jewels were less beautiful than those
of the other women. One very pretty
woman had buttons on her coat of emeralds
surrounded with pearls, and on her arm a
lovely bracelet of pearls. After tea, the
great ladies went into an inner room, with
the exception of two. One of these two had
a very sad face. I watched her and finally
had a chance to ask her how many children
she had. She said she had none, but she
would like to have a daughter. I was told
after that her husband was a Christian
pastor and she was trying to be Christian.
The other one who stayed was the pretty
one with the emerald buttons. I finally de-
cided the ladies had left us to play their
cards and asked if I might go and see them.
They were not playing cards, but had just
gone off to gossip among themselves, prob-
ably about the foreigners. One of the ladies
said she would take me some day to see their
card games. It is said they play in the
morning and in the afternoon and all the

202 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

night till the next morning when they go to
bed. It is commonly said this is all they
do, and the losses are very disastrous some-
times.

But they were not playing then and came
back, some of them with their children, and
sat in the rows of chairs, sixteen of them,
and some amahs around the room, while I
talked to them. I told stories about what
the American women did in the war and
they stared with amazement. I had to ex-
plain what a gas mask is, but they knew
what killing is and what high class is. Their
giggles were quite encouraging to inter-
course. A nice young lady from the college
interpreted, and when I stopped I asked
them to tell me something about their lives.
So the governor's wife was at last persuaded
to give an account of how she brought up
her children. They are all free from self-
consciousness, and though they have little
manners in our sense of the word, they have
a self-possession and gentleness combined

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 203

which gives a very graceful appearance.
The governor's wife says she has two little
boys, the eldest six years of age. In the
morning he has a Chinese tutor. After din-
ner, she teaches him music, of which she is
very fond. After that he plays till five-
thirty, has supper, plays again a little while
before going to bed, and then bed. At thir-
teen the boy will be sent away to school. I
asked her what about girls, and she said that
her little niece was the first one in her family
to be sent to school, but this ten-year-old one
is in Tientsin at a boarding school.

204 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

PEKING, Sunday, June 1.

We met a young man here from an in-
terior province who is trying to get money
for teachers who haven't received their pay
for a long time. Meantime over sixty per
cent of the entire national expenses is going
to the military, and the army is worse than
useless. In many provinces it is composed
of brigands and everywhere is practically
under the control of the tuchuns or military
governors, who are corrupt and use the pay
roll to increase their graft and the army to
increase their power of local oppression,
while the head military man is openly pro-
Japanese.

There is a lull in our affairs just now.
We agreed yesterday that never in our lives
had we Begun to learn as much as in the
last four months. And the last month par-
ticularly, there has been almost too much

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 205

food to be digestible. Talk about the secre-
tive and wily East. Compared, say, with
Europe, they hand information out to you
here on a platter (though it must be ad-
mitted the labels are sometimes mixed) and
sandbag you with it.

Yesterday we went to the Western Hills
where are the things you see in the pictures,
including the stone boat, the base of which
is really marble and as fine as the pictures.
But all the rest of it is just theatrical
fake, more or less peeling off at that. How-
ever, it is as wonderful as it is cracked up
to be, and in some ways more systematic
than Versailles, which is what you naturally
compare it to. The finest thing architec-
turally is a Buddhist temple with big tiles,
each of which has a Buddha on — for fur-
ther details see movie or something. We
walked somewhat higher than Russian Hill,
including a journey through the caves in an
artificial mountain such as the Chinese de-
light in, clear up to this temple. The

206 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

Manchu family seems to own the thing yet,
and charge a big sum, or rather several
sums, a la Niagara Falls, to get about —
another evidence that China needs another
revolution, or rather a revolution, the first
one having got rid of a dynasty and left,
as per my previous letters, a lot of corrupt
governors in charge of chaos. The only
thing that I can see that keeps things to-
gether at all is that while a lot of these gen-
erals and governors would like to grab more
for their individual selves, they are all afraid
the whole thing would come down round
their ears if anyone made a definite move.
Status quo is China's middle name, mostly
status and a little quo. I have one more
national motto to add to "You Never Can
Tell" and "Let George Do It." It is,
"That is very bad." Instead of concealing
things, they expose all their weak and bad
points very freely, and after setting them
forth most calmly and objectively, say
"That is very bad." I don't know whether

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 207

it is possible for a people to be too reason-
able, but it is certainly too possible to take
it out in being reasonable — and that's them.
However, it makes them wonderful com-
panions. You can hardly blame the Japan-
ese for wanting to run them and supply the
necessary pep when they decline to run
themselves. You certainly see the other
side of the famous one-track mind of Japan
over here, as well as of other things. If you
keep doing something all the time, I don't
know whether you need even a single track
mind. All you have to do is to keep going
where you started for, while others keep
wobbling or never get started.

Well, this morning we went to the famous
museum, and there is one thing where China
is still ahead. It is housed in some of the
old palaces and audience halls of the inner,
or purple, forbidden City. With the yellow
porcelain roofs, and the blue and green and
gold, and the red walls, it is really the bar-
baric splendor you read about, and about

208 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

the first thing that comes up to the conven-
tional idea of what is Oriental. The Hindoo
influence is much stronger here than any-
where else we have been, or else really Thi-
betan, I suppose, and many things remind
one of the Moorish. The city of Peking
was a thousand years building, and was laid
out on a plan when the capitals of Europe
were purely haphazard, so there is no doubt
they have organizing power all right if they
care to use it. The museum is literally one
of treasures, porcelains, bronzes, jade, etc.,
not an historic or antiquated museum. It
costs ten cents to get into the park here and
much more into the museum, a dollar or
more, I guess, and we got the impression
that it was fear of the crowd and the popu-
lace rather than the money which controls;
the rate is too high for revenue purposes.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 209

PEKING, June 1.

We have just seen a few hundred girls
march away from the American Board Mis-
sion school to go to see the President to
ask him to release the boy students who are
in prison for making speeches on the street.
To say that life in China is exciting is to put
it fairly. We are witnessing the hirth of a
nation, and birth always comes hard. I may
as well begin at the right end and tell you
what has happened while things have been
moving so fast I could not get time to write.
Yesterday we went to see the temples of
Western Hills, conducted by one of the
members of the Ministry of Education. As
we were running along the big street that
passes the city wall we saw students speak-
ing to groups of people. This was the first
time the students had appeared for several
days. We asked the official if they would

210 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

not be arrested, and he said, "No, not if they
keep within the law and do not make any
trouble among the people." This morning
when we got the paper it was full of nothing
else. The worst thing is that the University
has been turned into a prison with military
tents all around it and a notice on the out-
side that this is a prison for students who
disturb the peace by making speeches. As
this is all illegal, it amounts to a military
seizure of the University and therefore all
the faculty will have to resign. They are
to have a meeting this afternoon to discuss
the matter. After that is over, we will
probably know what has happened again.
The other thing we heard was that in addi-
tion to the two hundred students locked up
in the Law Building, two students were
taken to the Police rooms and flogged on the
back. Those two students were making a
speech and were arrested and taken before
the officers of the gendarmerie. Instead of
shutting up as they were expected to do, the

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

boys asked some questions of these officers
that were embarrassing to answer. The
officers then had them flogged on the back.
Thus far no one has been able to see any of
the officers. If the officers denied the accu-
sation then the reporters would ask to see
the two prisoners on the principle that the
officers could have no reason for refusing
that request unless the story were true. We
saw students making speeches this morning
about eleven, when we started to look for
houses, and heard later that they had been
arrested, that they carried tooth brushes and
towels in their pockets. Some stories say
that not two hundred but a thousand have
been arrested. There are about ten thou-
sand striking in Peking alone. The march-
ing out of those girls was evidently a shock
to their teachers and many mothers were
there to see them off. The girls were going
to walk to the palace of the President, which
is some long distance from the school. If he
does not see them, they will remain standing

213 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

outside all night and they will stay there
till he does see them. I fancy people will
take them food. We heard the imprisoned
students got bedding at four this morning
but no food till after that time. There is
water in the building and there is room for
them to lie on the floor. They are cleaner
than they would be in jail, and of course
much happier for being together.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 213

PEKING, June 2.

Maybe you would like to know a little
about how we look this morning and how we
are living. In the first place, this is a big
hotel with a bath in each room. On a big
street opposite to us is the wall of the lega-
tion quarter, which has trees in it and big
roofs which represent all that China ought
to have and has not. The weather is like
our hot July, except that it is drier than the
August drought on Long Island. The
streets of Peking are the widest in the world,
I guess, and ours leads by the red walls of
the Chinese city with the wonderful gates
of which you see pictures. It is macadam-
ized in the middle, but on each side of it
run wider roads, which are used for the
traffic. Thank your stars there are good
horses in Peking; men do not pull all the
heavy loads. The two side roads are worn

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

down in deep ruts and these ruts are filled
with dust like finest ashes, and all thrown up
into the air whenever a man steps on it or
a cart moves through. Our room faces the
south on this road. All day long the sun
pours through the bamboo shades and the
hot air. brings in that gray dust, and every-
thing you touch, including your own skin,
is gritty and has a queer dry feeling that
makes you think you ought to run for water.
I am learning to shut the windows and inner
blinds afternoons. Isn't it strange that in
the latitude of New York this drought
should be expected every spring? In spite
of all this the fields have crops growing,
thinly, to be sure, on the hard gray fields.
There are very few trees, and they are not
of the biggest. The grain is already about
fit to cut, and the onions are ripe. After
a while it will rain and rain much and then
new crops will be put in. The flowers are
almost gone and I am sorry that we did not
see the famous peonies. You will be inter-

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 215

ested to know that they keep the peonies
small; even the tree kind are cut down till
they are the size of those little ones of mine.
The tuber peonies are transplanted each
year or in some way kept small and the blos-
soms are lovely and little. I have seen white
rose peonies and at first thought they were
roses. The buds look almost like the buds
of our big white roses and they are very
fragrant. The peony beds are laid out in
terraces held in place by brick walls, usually
oblong or oval, something like a huge pud-
ding mold on a table. Other times they
are planted on the flat and surrounded by
bamboo fences of fancy design and geomet-
rical pattern, usually with a square form to
include each division. The inner city has
many peony beds of that sort, both the tree
and tuber kind, but they have only leaves to
show now.

Yesterday we went to the summer palace
and to-day we are going to the museum.
That is really inside the Forbidden City, so

216 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

at last we shall set foot on the sacred
ground. The summer palace is really won-
derful, but sad now, like all things made on
too ambitious a scale to fit into the uses of
life. There is a mile of loggia ornamented
with the green and blue and red paintings
which you see imitated. Through a window
we had a peek at the famous portrait of old
Tsu Hsu and she looks just as she did when
I saw it exhibited in New York. The
strange thing about it is that it is still owned
by the Hsu family. Huge rolls of costly
rugs and curtains lie in piles round the room
and everything is covered with this fine dust
so thick that it is not possible to tell the color
of a table top. Cloissonne vases, or rather
images of the famous blue ware stand
under the old lady's portrait, and everything
is going to rack and ruin. Meantime we
wandered around, planning how it could be
made over into use when the revolution
comes. Get rid of the idea that China has
had a revolution and is a republic; that point

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 217

is just where we have been deceived in the
United States. China is at present the
rotten crumbling remnant of the old bu-
reaucracy that surrounded the corruption of
the Manchus and that made them possible.
The little Emperor is living here in his palace
surrounded by his eunuchs and his tutors
and his two mothers. He is fourteen and it
is really funny to think that they have just
left him Emperor, but as he has not money
except what the republic votes him from
year to year, nobody worries about him,
unless it is the Japanese, who want the im-
perial government restored until they get
ready to take it themselves. It looks as if
they might be ready now except for the
nudge which has just been given to the
peace conference. You had better read a
book about this situation, for it is the most
surprising affair in a lifetime.

Yesterday we went to see a friend's house.
It is interesting and I should like to live in
one like it. There is no water except what

218 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

the water man brings every day. This little
house has eighteen rooms around a court.
It means four separate roofs and going out-
doors to get from one to another. When
the mercury is at twenty below zero it would
mean that just the same. All the ground
floors have stone floors. We did not see all
the rooms ; there are paper windows in some
and glass windows in some. In summer
they put on a temporary roof of mats over
the court. It is higher than the roofs and
so allows ventilation and gives good shade.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 219

June 5.

This is Thursday morning, and last night
we heard that about one thousand students
were arrested the day before. Yesterday
afternoon a friend got a pass which per-
mitted him to enter the building where the
students were confined. They have filled up
the building of Law, and have begun on the
Science building, in consequence of which the
faculty have to go to the Missionary build-
ings to-day to hold their faculty meeting.
At four yesterday afternoon, the prisoners
who had been put in that day at ten had
had no food. One of our friends went out
and got the University to appropriate some
money and they ordered a carload of bread
sent in. This bread means some little bis-
cuit sometimes called raised biscuit at home.
I think carload means one of the carts in
which they are delivered. At any rate, the

220 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

boys had some food, though not at the ex-
pense of the police. On the whole, the
checkmate of the police seems surely im-
pending. They will soon have the buildings
full, as the students are getting more and
more in earnest, and the most incredible
part of it is that the police are surprised.
They really thought the arrests would
frighten the others from going on. So
everybody is getting an education. This
morning one of our friends here is going to
take us up to the University to see the mili-
tary encampment, and I hope he will take
us inside also, though I hardly think he will
do the latter.

As near as I can find out, the Chinese
have reached that interesting stage of de-
velopment when they must do something for
women and do as little as they can, but in
case they must have a girls' school they find
that a convenient place to unload an anti-
quated official wrho really can't be endured
any longer by real folks.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 221

No one can tell to-day what the students'
strike will bring next; it may bring a revo-
lution, it may do anything surprising to the
police, who seem to be as lacking in imagina-
tion as police are famous for being. Every-
one here is getting ready to flee for the
summer, which is very hot during July. On
the whole, the heat is perhaps less hard to
endure than the heat of New York, as it
is so dry. But the dryness has its own effect
and when those hard winds blow up the dust
storms it gets on the nerves. Dust heaps
up inside the house, and cuts the skin both
inside and outside of the body. This is a
lucky day, being cloudy and a little damp
as if it might rain.

The Western Hill was an experience to
remember. Stepping from a Ford limou-
sine to a chair carried by four men and an
outwalker alongside, we were thus taken by
fifteen men to the temples, your father, an
officer from the Department of Education,
and I. The men walked over the paths in

222 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

the dust and on stones which no one thinks
of picking up. It was so astounding to call
it a pleasure resort that we could only stare
and remain dumb. We saw three temples
and one royal garden. Five hundred Bud-
dhas in one building, and all the buildings
tumble-down and dirty. On top of one hill
is a huge building which cost a million or
more to build about four hundred years ago
by someone for his tomb. Then he did
something wrong, probably stole from the
wrong person, and was not allowed to be
buried there. Round the temple places the
trees remain and give a refreshing oasis, and
there are some beautiful springs. All the
time we kept saying, "Trees ought to be
planted." "Yes, but they take so long to
grow," or, "Yes, but they will not grow, it
is so dry," etc. Sometimes they would say,
"Yes, we must plant some trees," or more
likely, "Yes, I think we may plant some
trees sometime, but we have an Arbor
Day and the people cut down the trees or

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 223

else they did." We would show that the
trees would grow because they were there
round the temples, and besides grass was
growing and trees would grow where grass
would grow in such dry weather, and they
would say the same things over. It made
the little forestry station in Nanking seem
like a monumental advance, while that fear-
ful sun was beating up the dust under the
stones as the men gave us the Swedish mas-
sage in the motion of the chairs. Fifty men
and more stood around as we got in and out
of the car and five men apiece stood and
waited for us as we walked round the temple
and ate our lunch and spent the time sip-
ping tea, and yet they cannot plant trees,
and that is China.

The whole country is covered every inch
with stones. Nature has supplied them, and
falling walls are everywhere. We saw one
great thing, however. They are building a
new school house and orphanage for the
children of that village. Many of the chil-

224 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

dren are naked everywhere hereabouts and
they stand with sunburned heads, their
backs covered only with coats of dirt, eating
their bean food in the street. Everywhere
the food is laid out on tables by the road-
side ready to eat. In one temple, a certain
official here has promised to rebuild a small
shrine which houses the laughing Buddha,
who is made of bronze and was once covered
with lacquer, which is now mostly split off.
At present the only shade the god has is a
roof of mats which they have braced up on
the pile of ruins that once made a roof. The
President of the Republic has built a lovely
big gate like the old ones, because it is pro-
pitious and would bring him good fortune.
But he has decided it was not propitious,
something went wrong with the gods, I did
not learn what it was; anyway, he is now
tearing down one of the big buttresses on
one side of it to see if fate will treat him
more kindly then. Just what he wants of
fate I did not learn either, but perhaps it

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 225

is that fate should make him Emperor, as
that seems to be their idea of curing poverty
and political evils. I forgot to say that they
never remove ruins ; everything is left to lie
as it falls or is falling, so one gets a good
idea of how gods are constructed. Most of
them were of clay, a sort of concrete built
up on a wood frame, and badly as they need
wood I have never seen a sign of piling up
the fallen beams of a temple. Instead of
that, you risk your life by walking under
these falling roofs unless you have the sense
to look after your own safety. In most of
these Peking temples they do sweep the
floors and even some of the statues look as
if they had some time been dusted, though
this last I am not certain about.

226 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

PEKING, June 5.

As has been remarked before, you never
can tell. The students were stirred up by
orders dissolving their associations, and by
the "mandates" criticising the Japanese
boycott and telling what valuable services
the two men whose dismissal was demanded
had rendered the country. So they got busy
— the students. They were also angered
because the industrial departments of two
schools were ordered closed by the police.
In these departments the students had set
about seeing what things of Japanese im-
portation could be replaced by hand labor
without waiting for capital. After they
worked it out in the school they went out
to the shops and taught the people how to
make them, and then peddled them about,
making speeches at the same time. Well,
yesterday when we went about we noticed

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 227

that the students were speaking more than
usual, and while the streets were full of sol-
diers the students were not interfered with;
in the afternoon a procession of about a
thousand students was even escorted by the
police. Then in the evening a telephone
came from the University that the tents
around the University buildings where the
students were imprisoned had been struck
and the soldiers were all leaving. Then the
students inside held a meeting and passed a
resolution asking the government whether
they were guaranteed freedom of speech,
because if they were not, they would not
leave the building merely to be arrested
again, as they planned to go on speaking.
So they embarrassed the government by re-
maining in "jail" all night. We haven't
heard to-day what has happened, but the
streets are free of soldiers, and there were no
students talking anywhere we went, so I
fancy a truce has been arranged while they
try and fix things up. The government's

228 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

ignominious surrender was partly due to the
fact that the places of detention were get-
ting full and about twice as many students
spoke yesterday as the day before, when
they arrested a thousand, and the govern-
ment for the first time realized that they
couldn't bulldoze the students; it was also
partly due to the fact that the merchants
in Shanghai struck the day before yester-
day, and there is talk that the Peking mer-
chants are organizing for the same purpose.
This is, once more, a strange country; the
so-called republic is a joke; all it has meant
so far is that instead of the Emperor having
a steady job, the job of ruling and looting
is passed around to the clique that grabs
power. One of the leading militarist party
generals invited his dearest enemy to break-
fast a while ago — within the last few months
— in Peking, and then lined his guest
against the wall and had him shot. Did this
affect his status? He is still doing business
at the old stand. But in some ways there

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 229

is more democracy than we have; leaving
out the women, there is complete social
equality, and while the legislature is a per-
fect farce, public opinion, when it does ex-
press itself, as at the present time, has re-
markable influence. Some think the worst
officials will now resign and get out, others
that the militarists will attempt a coup
d'etat and seize still more power rather than
back down. Fortunately, the latter seem
to be divided at the present time. But all
of the student (and teacher) crowd are
much afraid that even if the present gang
is thrown out, it will be only to replace them
by another set just as bad, so they are re-
fraining from appealing to the army for
help.

Later. — The students have now asked
that the chief of police come personally to
escort them out and make an apology. In
many ways, it seems like an opera bouffe,
but there is no doubt that up to date they
have shown more shrewdness and policy

230 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

than the government, and are getting the
latter where it is a laughing stock, which is
fatal in China. But the government isn't
inactive; they have appointed a new Min-
ister of Education and a new Chancellor of
the University, both respectable men, with
no records and colorless characters. It is
likely the Faculty will decline to receive the
new Chancellor unless he makes a satisfac-
tory declaration — which he obviously can't,
and thus the row will begin all over again,
with the Faculty involved. If the govern-
ment dared, it would dissolve the University,
but the scholar has a sacred reputation in
China.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 231

June 7.

The whole story of the students is funny
and not the least funny part is that last Fri-
day the students were speaking and parad-
ing with banners and cheers and the police
standing near them like guardian angels, no
one being arrested or molested. We heard
that one student pouring out hot eloquence
was respectfully requested to move his audi-
ence along a little for the reason that they
were so numerous in statu quo as to impede
traffic, and the policeman would not like to
be held responsible for interfering with the
traffic. Meantime, Saturday the govern-
ment sent an apology to the students who
were still in prison of their own free will
waiting for the government to apologize and
to give them the assurance of free speech,
etc. The students are said to have left the
building yesterday morning, though we

232 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

have no accurate information. The Faculty
of the University met and refused to recog-
nize or accept the new Chancellor. They
sent a committee to the government to tell
them that, and one to the Chancellor to tell
him also and to ask him to resign. It seems
the newly-appointed Chancellor used to he
at the head of the engineering school of the
University, but he was kicked out in the
political struggle. He is an official of the
Yuan Shi Kai school and has become a rich
rubber merchant in Malay, and anyway
they do not want a mere rubber merchant
as President of the University, and they
think they may so explain that to the new
Chancellor that he will not look upon the
office as so attractive as he thought it was.

There is complete segregation in this city
in all public gatherings, the women at the
theaters are put off in one of those real gal-
leries such as we think used to be and are
not now. The place for the women in the
hall of the Board of Education is good

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 233

enough and on one side facing the hall so
that all the men can look at them freely and
so protect that famous modesty which I
have heard more of in China than for many
years previously.

Gasoline is one dollar a gallon here and
a Ford car costs $1900. Ivory soap five for
one dollar. Clean your dress for $2.50.
Tooth paste one dollar a tube, vaseline 50
cents a small bottle. Washing three cents
each, including dresses and men's coats and
shirts; fine cook ten dollars a month. They
have a yery good one here, and I am going
right on getting fat on delicious Chinese
food. The new Rockefeller Institute, called
the Union Medical College, is very near
here, and they are making beautiful build-
ings in the old Chinese style, to say nothing
of their Hygiene. They have just decided
to open it to women, but I am rather sus-
picious the requirements will prevent the
women's using it at first.

Peking is still much of a capital city and

234 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

is divided into the diplomats and the mis-
sionaries. It seems there is not much lack-
ing except the old Dowager Empress to
make up the old Peking.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 235

PEKING, June 10.

The students have taken the trick and
won the game at the present moment — I de-
cline to predict the morrow when it comes
to China. Sunday morning I lectured at
the auditorium of the Board of Education
and at that time the officials there didn't
know what had happened. But the govern-
ment sent what is called a pacification dele-
gate to the self -imprisoned students to say
that the government recognized that it had
made a mistake and apologized. Conse-
quently the students marched triumphantly
out, and yesterday their street meetings
were bigger and more enthusiastic than ever.
The day before they had hooted at four un-
official delegates who had asked them to
please come out of jail, but who hadn't
apologized. But the biggest victory is that

236 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

it is now reported that the government will
to-day issue a mandate dismissing the three
men who are always called traitors — yester-
day they had got to the point of offering
to dismiss one, the one whose house was at-
tacked by the students on the fourth of
May, but they were told that that wouldn't
be enough, so now they have surrendered
still more. Whether this will satisfy the
striking merchants or whether they will
make further demands, having won the first
round, doesn't yet appear. There are lots
of rumors, of course. One is that the back-
down is not only due to the strike of mer-
chants, but to a fear that the soldiers could
no longer be counted upon. There was even
a rumor that a regiment at Western Hills
was going to start for Peking to side with
the students. Rumors are one of China's
strong suits. When you realize that we
have been here less than six weeks, you will
have to admit that we have been seeing life.
For a country that is regarded at home as

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 237

stagnant and unchanging, there is certainly
something doing.

This is the world's greatest kaleidoscope.

Wilson's Decoration Day Address has
just been published; perhaps it sounds aca-
demic at home, but over here Chinese at
least regard it as very practical — as, in fact,
a definite threat. On the other hand, we
continue to get tales of how the Washing-
ton State Department has declined to take
the reports sent from here as authentic.
Lately they have had a number of special
agents over here, more or less secret, to get
independent information.

In talking about democratic develop-
ments in America, whenever I make a re-
mark such as the Americans do not depend
upon the government to do things for them,
but go ahead and do things for themselves,
the response is immediate and emphatic.
The Chinese are socially a very democratic
people and their centralized government
bores them.

238 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

June 16.

Chinesewise speaking, we are now having
another lull. The three 'traitors" have had
their resignations accepted, the cabinet is
undergoing reconstruction, the strike has
been called off, both of students and mer-
chants (the railwaymen striking was the
last straw), and the mystery is what will
happen next. There are evidences that the
extreme militarists are spitting on their
hands to take hold in spite of their defeat,
and also that the President, who is said to
be a moderate and skillful politician, is nurs-
ing things along to get matters more and
more into his own hands. Although he
issued a mandate against the students and
commending the traitors, the students' vic-
tory seems to have strengthened him. I
can't figure it out, but it is part of the gen-
eral beginning to read at the back of the

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 239

book. The idea seems to be that he has
demonstrated the weakness of the militarists
in the country, while in sticking in form by
them he has given them no excuse for at-
tacking him. They are attacking most
everybody else in anonymous circulars. One
was got out signed "Thirteen hundred and
fifty-eight students," but giving no names,
saying that the sole object of the strike was
to regain Tsingtao, but that a few men had
tried to turn the movement to their own
ends, one wishing to be Chancellor of the
University.

240 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

PEKING, June 20.

Some time ago I had decided to tell you
that here I had found the human duplica-
tion of the bee colony in actual working
order. China is it, and in all particulars
lives up to the perfect socialization of the
race. Nobody can do anything alone, no-
body can do anything in a hurry. The hunt
of the bee for her cell goes on before one's
eyes all the time. When found, lo, the dis-
covery that the cell was there all the time.
Let me give you an example.

We go to the art school for lectures, enter
by a door at the end of a long hall. Behind
that hall is another large room and in back
of the second room somewhere is a place
where the men make the tea. Near the front
door where we enter is the table where we
are always asked to sit down before and
after the lecture, whereat we sit down to

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 241

partake of tea and other beverages, sucH
as soda. Well, the teacups are kept in a
cabinet at the front end of the first room
right near the entrance door. Comes a
grown man from the rear somewhere; si-
lently and with stately tread he walks across
the long room to the cabinet, takes one tea-
cup in each hand and retreads the space
towards the back. After sufficient time he
returns bearing in his two hands these cups
filled with hot tea. He puts these down on
the table for us and then he takes two more
cups from the cabinet, and retires once more,
returning later as before. When bottles
are opened they are brought near the table,
because otherwise the soda would be spoiled
in carrying open, never to save steps.

The Chinese kitchen is always several
feet from the dining room, under a separate
roof. Often you must cross a court in the
open to get from one to another. As it has
not rained since we have been here, I do not
know what happens to the soup under the

242 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

umbrella. But remember, the beehive is the
thing in China, and it is the old-fashioned
beehive in the barrel. When you look at the
men who are doing it all they have the air
of strong, quiet beings who might do almost
anything, but when you get acquainted with
them, how they do almost nothing is a mar-
velous achievement. At Ching Hua Col-
lege, said being the famous Boxer Indem-
nity College, the houses are new and built
by American initiative, and the kitchen is
forty feet from the dining room door in
those. I will not describe the kitchens, but
when you see the clay stoves crumbling in
places, no sink, and one window on one side
of the rather dark room, a little room where
the cook sleeps on a board and where both
the men eat their own frugal meals, it is all
the Middle Ages undisturbed.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 243

PEKING, June 20.

Last weekend we went out about ten
miles to Ching Hua College; this is the in-
stitution started with the returned Boxer
Indemnity Fund; it's a high school with
about two years college work; they have
just graduated sixty or seventy who are
going to America next year to finish up.
They go all around, largely to small colleges
and the Middle West state institutions, a
good many to Tech and a number to
Stevens, though none go to Columbia, be-
cause it is in a big city; just what improve-
ment Hoboken is I don't know. China is
full of Columbia men, but they went there
for graduate work. No doubt it is wise
keeping them away from a big city at first.
Except for the instruction in Chinese, the
teaching is all done in English, and the boys
seem to speak English quite well already.

244 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

It's a shame the way they will be treated,
the insults they will have to put up with in
America before they get really adjusted.
And then when they get back here they Lave
even a worse time getting readjusted. They
have been idealizing their native land at the
same time that they have got Americanized
without knowing it, and they have a hard
time to get a job to make a living. They
have been told that they are the future
saviors of their country and then their coun-
try doesn't want them for anything at all —
and they can't help making comparisons
and realizing the backwardness of China
and its awful problems. At the same time
at the bottom of his heart probably every
Chinese is convinced of the superiority of
Chinese civilization — and maybe they are
right — three thousand years is quite a spell
to hold on.

You may come over here some time in
your life, so it will do no harm to learn
about the money — about it, nobody But the

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 245

Chinese bankers ever learn it. There are
eleven dimes in a dollar and six twenty-cent
pieces, and while there are only eleven cop-
pers in a dime, there are one hundred and
thirty-eight in a dollar. Consequently the
thrifty always carry a pound or two of big
coppers with them to pay 'ricksha men with.
Then there are various kinds of paper
money. We are going to Western Hills to-
morrow night, and under instructions I
bought some dollars at sixty-five cents
apiece which are good for a whole dollar on
this railway and apparently nowhere else.
On the contrary, the foreigners are done all
the time at the hotels ; there they only give
you five twenty-cent pieces in change for a
dollar, and so on — but they are run by for-
eigners, and not by the wily Chinese. One
thing you will be glad to know is that
Peking is Americanized to the extent that
we have ice cream at least once a day, two
big helpings. This helps.

A word to the wise. Never ask a Chinese

246 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

whether it is going to rain, or any other
question about the coming weather. The
turtle is supposed to be a weather prophet,
and as the turtle is regarded as the vilest
creature on earth, you can see what an insult
such a question is. One of their subtle
compliments to the Japanese during the
late campaign was to take a straw hat, of
Japanese make, which they had removed
from a passerby's head, and cut it into the
likeness of a turtle and then nail it up on
a telephone post.

I find, by the way, that I didn't do the
students justice when I compared their first
demonstration here to a college boys' rough-
house; the whole thing was planned care-
fully, it seems, and was even pulled off
earlier than would otherwise have been the
case, because one of the political parties was
going to demonstrate soon, and they were
afraid their movement (coming at the same
time) would make it look as if they were an
agency of the political faction, and they

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 247

wanted to act independently as students.
To think of kids in our country from four-
teen on, taking the lead in starting a big
cleanup reform politics movement and
shaming merchants and professional men
into joining them. This is sure some
country.

248 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

PEKING, June 23.

Last night we had a lovely dinner at the
house of a Chinese official. All the guests
were men except me and the fourteen-year-
old daughter of the house. She was educated
in an English school here and speaks beauti-
ful English, besides being a talented and
interesting girl. Chinese girls at her age
seem older than ours. The family consists
of five children and two wives. I found the
reason the daughter was hostess was that it
was embarrassing to choose between the two
wives for hostess and they didn't want to
give us a bad impression, so no wife ap-
peared. We were given to understand that
the reason for the non-appearance was that
mother was sick. There is a new little baby
six weeks old. The father is a delicate, re-
fined little man, very proud of his children
and fond of them, and they were all brought

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 249

out to see us, even the six weeks older, who
was very hot in a little red dress. Our host
is the leader of a party of liberal progress-
ives, and also an art collector. We had
hopes he would show us his collection of
things. He did not, except for the lovely
porcelain that was on the table. The house
is big and behind the wall of the Purple City,
as they call the old Forbidden City, and it
looks on the famous old pagoda, so it was
interesting. We sat in the court for coffee
and there seemed to be many more courts
leading on one behind another as they do
here, sometimes fourteen or more, with
chains of houses around each one.

As for the dinner, I forgot to say that the
cook is a remarkable man, Fukien, who gave
us the most delicious Chinese cookery with
French names attached on the menu. Cook-
ing is apt to be named geographically here.
Most everyone in Peking came from some-
where else, just as should be in a capital
city. But they seem to keep the cooks and

250 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

cook in accordance with the predelictions of
the old home province. They have adopted
ice cream, showing the natural sense of the
race, but the daughter of our host told me
that they do not give it to the sick, as they
still have the idea that the sick should have
nothing cold.

They are now thrashing the wheat in this
locality. That consists of cutting it with
the sickle and having the women and chil-
dren glean. The main crop is scattered on
the floor, as it is called, being a hard piece
of ground near the house, and then the
wheat is treaded out by a pair of don-
keys attached to a roller about as big as
our garden roller. After it is out of the
husk, it is winnowed by being tossed in the
breeze, which takes the time of a number
of people and leaves in a share of the mother
earth. The crops are very thin round this
region and they say that they are thinner
than usual, as this is a drier year than usual.
Corn is small, but there is some growing be-

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 251

tween here and the hills where we went,
always in the little pieces of ground, of
course. Peanuts and sweet potatoes are
planted now, and they seem to be growing
well in the dust, which has been wet by the
recent day of rain.

252 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

PEKING, June 25.

Simple facts for home consumption. All
boards in China are sawed by hand — two
men and a saw, like a cross-cut buck-saw.
At the new Hotel de Peking, a big build-
ing, instead of carrying window casings
ready to put in, they are carrying big logs
cut the proper length for a casing. Spitting
is a common accomplishment. When a
school girl wants excuse to leave her seat she
walks across the room and spits vigorously
in the spittoon. Little melons are now
ready to eat. They come like ripe cucum-
bers, small, rather sweet. Coolies and boys
eat them, skins and all, on the street. Chil-
dren eat small green apples. Peaches are
expensive, but those who can get the green
hard ones eat them raw. The potted pome-
granates are now in bloom and also in fruit
in the pots. The color is a wonderful scar-

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 253

let. The lotus ponds are in bloom — wonder-
ful color in a deep rose. When the buds are
nearly ready to open they look as if they
were about to explode and fill the air with
their intense color. The huge leaves are
brilliant and lovely — light green and deli-
cately veined. But the lotus was never
made for art, and only religion could have
made it acceptable to art. The sacred ponds
are well kept and are in the old moats of
the Purple City — Forbidden. There are
twice as many men in Peking as women.

Sunday we went to a Chinese wedding.
It was at the Naval Club — no difference in
appearance from our ceremony. Bride and
groom both in the conventional foreign
dress. They had a ring. At the supper
there were six tables full of men, and three
partly full of women and children. Women
take their children and their amahs every-
where in China — I mean wherever they go
and provided they want to; it is the custom.
None of the men spoke to the women at the

254 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

wedding — except rare returned students.
Eggs cost $1.00 for 120 — we get all we
want in our boarding house. Men take
birds out for walks — either in cages or with
one leg tied to a string attached to a stick
on which the bird perches.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 255

PEKING, June 27.

It's a wonder we were ever let out of
Japan at all. It's fatal; I could now tell
after reading ten lines of the writings of any
traveler whether he ever journeyed beyond
a certain point. You have to hand it to the
Japanese. Their country is beautiful, their
treatment of visitors is beautiful, and they
have the most artistic knack of making the
visible side of everything beautiful, or at
least attractive. Deliberate deceit couldn't
be one-tenth as effective; it's a real gift of
art. They are the greatest manipulators of
the outside of things that ever lived. I real-
ized when I was there that they; were a na-
tion of specialists, but I didn't realize that
foreign affairs and diplomacy were also such
a specialized art.

The new acting Minister of Education has
invited us to dinner soon. This man doesn't
appear to have any past educational record,

256 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

but he has pursued a conciliatory course ; the
other one resigned and disappeared when he
found he couldn't control things. The
really liberal element does not appear to be
strong enough at present to influence poli-
tics practically. The struggle is between
the extreme militarists, who are said to be
under Japanese influence, and the group of
somewhat colorless moderates headed by the
President. As he gets a chance he appears
to be putting his men in. The immediate
gain seems to be negative in keeping the
other crowd out instead of positive, but they
are at least honest -and will probably re-
spond when there is enough organized lib-
eral pressure brought to bear upon them.

It cannot be denied that it is hot here.
Yesterday we went out in 'rickshas about the
middle of the day and I don't believe I ever
felt such heat. It is like the Yosemite, only
considerably more intense as well as for
longer periods of time. The only consola-
tion one gets from noting that it isn't humid

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 257

is that if it were, one couldn't live at all.
But the desert sands aren't moist either.
Your mother asked the coolie why he didn't
wear a hat, and he said because it was too
hot. Think of pulling a person at the rate
of five or six miles an hour in the sun of a
hundred and twenty or thirty with your
head exposed. Most of the coolies who
work in the sun have nothing on their heads.
It's either survival of the fittest or inheri-
tance of acquired characteristics. Their
adaptation to every kind of physical discom-
fort is certainly one of the wonders of the
world. You ought to see the places where
they lie down to go to sleep. They have it
all over Napoleon. This is also Ihe country
of itinerant domesticity. I doubt if lots of
the 'ricksha men have any places to sleep
except in their carts. And a large part of
the population must buy their food of the
street pedlars, who sell every conceivable
cooked thing; then there are lots of cooked
food stores besides the street men.

258 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

PEKING, July 2.

The rainy season has set in, and now we
have floods and also coolness, the tempera-
ture having fallen from the late nineties to
the early seventies, and life seems more
worth living again.

This is a great country for pictures, and
I am most anxious for one of a middle-aged
Chinese, inclining to be fat, with a broad-
brimmed straw hat, sitting on the back of a
very small and placid cream colored donkey.
He is fanning himself as the donkey moves
imperceptibly along the highway, is satis-
fied with himself and at ease with the world,
and everything in the world, whatever hap-
pens. This would be a good frontispiece
for a book on China — and the joke wouldn't
all be on the Chinese either.

To-day the report is that the Chinese
delegates refused to sign the Paris treaty;

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 259

the news seems ^oo good to be true, but no-
body can learn the facts. There are also
rumors that the governmental military
party, having got everything almost out of
Japan that is coming to them and finding
themselves on the unpopular side, are about
to forget that they ever knew the Japanese
and to come out very patriotic. This is also
unconfirmed, but I suppose the only reason
they would stay bought in any case is that
there are no other bidders in the market.

260 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

PEKING, Wednesday, July 2.

The anxiety here is tense. The report is
that the delegates did not sign, hut so
vaguely worded as to leave conjectures and
no confirmation. Meanwhile the students'
organizations, etc., have hegun another at-
tack against the government by demanding
the dissolution of Parliament. Meantime
there is no cabinet and the President can get
no one to form one, and half those inside
seem to be also on the strike because the
other half are there.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 261

PEKING, July 4.

We are going out to the Higher Normal
this morning. The head of the industrial
department is going to take us. The stu-
dents are erecting three new school build-
ings this summer — they made the plans, de-
signs, details, and are supervising the erec-
tion as well as doing the routine carpenter
work. The head of the industrial depart-
ment, who acted as our guide and host, has
been organizing the "national industry"
activity in connection with the students' agi-
tation. He is now, among other things, try-
ing to organize apprentice schools under
guild control. The idea is to take the bright-
est apprentice available in each "factory"
— really, of course, just a household group
—and give them two hours' schooling a day
with a view to introducing new methods and
new products into the industry. They are

262 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

going to take metal working here. Then he
hopes it will spread all over China. You
cannot imagine the industrial backwardness
here, not only as compared with us but with
Japan. Consequently their markets here
are flooded with cheap flimsy Japan-made
stuff, which they buy because it's cheap, the
line of least resistance. But perhaps the
Shantung business will be worth its cost.
The cotton guild is very anxious to co-oper-
ate and they will supply capital if the
schools can guarantee skilled workingmen,
especially superintendents. Now they sell
four million worth of cotton to Japan,
where it is spun, and then buy back the same
cotton in thread for fourteen million —
which they weave. This is beside the large
amount of woven cotton goods they import.
I find in reading books that the Awaken-
ing of China has been announced a dozen or
more times by foreign travelers in the last
ten years, so I hesitate to announce it again,
but I think this is the first time the mer-

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 263

chants and guilds have really been actively
stirred to try to improve industrial methods.
And if so, it is a real awakening — that and
the combination with the students. I read
the translations from Japanese every few
days, and it would be very interesting to
know whether their ignorance is real or as-
sumed. Probably some of both — it is in-
conceivable that they should be as poor
judges of Chinese psychology as the articles
indicate. But at the same time they have
to keep up a certain tone of belief among
the people at home — namely, that the Chi-
nese really prefer the Japanese to all other
foreigners; for they realize their depend-
ence upon them, and if they do not make
common cause with them it is because for-
eigners, chiefly Americans, instigate it all
from mercenary and political motives. As
a matter of fact, I doubt if history knows
of any such complete case of national dislike
and distrust; it sometimes seems as if there
hadn't been a single thing that the Japanese

264 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

might have done to alienate the Chinese that
they haven't tried. The Chinese would feel
pretty sore at America for inviting them
into the war and then leaving them in the
lurch, if the Japanese papers and politicians
hadn't spent all their time the last three
months abusing America — then their sweet
speeches in America. It will be interesting
to watch and see just what particular string
they trip on finally.

It's getting to the end of an Imperfect
Day. We saw the school as per program
and I find I made a mistake. The boys
made the plans of the three buildings and
are supervising their erection, but not doing
the building. They are staying in school all
summer, however — those in the woodwork-
ing class — and have taken a contract for
making all the desks for the new buildings —
the school gives them room and board (food
and its preparation costs about five dollars
per month), and they practically give their
time. All the metal-working boys are stay-

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 265

ing in Peking and working in the shops to
improve and diversify the products. Re-
member these are boys, eighteen to twenty,
and that they are carrying on their propa-
ganda for their country; that the summer
averages one hundred in the shade in Pe-
king, and you'll admit there is some stuff
here.

This P.M. we went to a piece of the cele-
bration. The piece we saw wasn't so very
Fourth of Julyish, but it was interesting —
Chinese sleight of hand. Their long robe
is an advantage, but none the less it can't be
so very easy to move about with a very large
sized punch bowl filled to the brim with
water, or with five glass bowls each with a
gold fish in it, ready to bring out. It seems
that sometimes the artist turns a somersault
just as he brings out the big bowl of water,
but we didn't get that. None of the tricks
were complicated, but they were the neatest
I ever saw. There is a home-made minstrel
show to-night, but it rained, and as the show

266 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

(and dance later) are in the open, we aren't
going, as we intended.

You can't imagine what it means here for
China not to have signed. The entire gov-
ernment has been for it — the President up
to ten days before the signing said it was
necessary. It was a victory for public
opinion, and all set going by these little
schoolboys and girls. Certainly the United
States ought to be ashamed when China can
do a thing of this sort.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 267

Sunday, July 7.

We had quite another ride yesterday,
sixty or seventy miles altogether. The rea-
son for the macadam road is worth telling.
When Yuan Shi Kai was planning to be
Emperor his son broke his leg, and he heard
the hot springs would be good for him. So
one of the officials made a road to it. Some
of the present day officials, including an ex-
official who was recently forced to resign
after being beaten up, now own the springs
and hotel, so the road will continue to be
taken care of. On the way we went through
the village of the White Snake and also of
the One Hundred Virtues.

Y. M. C. A.'s and Red Crossers are still
coming from Siberia on their way home. I
don't know whether they will talk freely
when they get home. It is one mess, and
the stories they will tell won't improve our

268 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

foreign relations any. The Bolsheviki
aren't the only ones that shoot up villages
and take the loot — so far the Americans
haven't done it.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 369

PEKING, July 8.

This morning the papers here reported
the denial of Japan that she had made a
secret treaty with Germany. The opinion
here seems to he that they did not, but
merely that preliminaries had begun with
reference to such a treaty. We heard at
dinner the other day from responsible
American officials here that, after America
had completed the last of the arrangements
for China to go into the war, the Japanese
arranged to get a concession from Russia
for the delivery on the part of the Japanese
of China into the war on the side of the
Allies.

Well, the Japanese are still at it with the
cat out of the bag. It looks now as if they
are getting ready to break up the present
government in Japan. This is interpreted
to mean that that breakup will be made to

270 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

look as if it were in disapproval of the pres-
ent mistakes in diplomacy and of the price
of rice; and then they can put in a worse
one there and the world will not know the
difference, but will be made to think that
Japan is reforming. Speaking of constitu-
tionality in Japan, I ceased to worry about
that as soon as I learned the older states-
men never troubled at all about who was
elected, but just let the elections go through,
as their business was so assured in other
ways that the elections made no difference
anyway, and that the same principle worked
equally well in the matter of passing bills. No
bill can ever come up without the approval
of the powers that be and they know how
it is coming out in spite of all discussions.
No wonder change comes slowly and maybe
it will have to come all at once in the form
of a revolution if it comes in reality. It is
now reported that Tsai, the Chancellor of
the University here, has said he will come
back on condition that the students do not

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 271

move in future in any political matter with-
out his consent, and I am not able to guess
whether that is a concession or a clever way
of seeming to agree with both sides at once.
The announcement of Tsai's return means
that things will soon be back in normal
shape and ready for another upheaval.

We seem to be utterly stumped by the
house situation. All the members of the
Rockefeller Foundation get nice new houses
built for them, and the houses are nice new
Chinese ones but free from the poor quali-
ties of those to be rented here. All the
houses in Peking are built like our wood-
sheds, directly on the ground, raised a few
inches from actual contact with the earth
by a stone floor. The courts fill with water
when the rains are hard and then they are
moist for days, maybe weeks, and about two
feet of wet seeps up the side of the walls.
Yesterday we called on one of our Chinese
friends here, and the whole place was in that
state, but he did not seem to notice it. If

272 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

he wants baths in the house it doubles the
cost he pays the water wagon, and then after
all the trouble of heating and carrying the
water there is no way to dispose of the
waste, except to get a man to come and
carry it away in buckets. You would have
endless occupation here just looking on to
see how this bee colony can find so many
ways of making life hard for itself. A gen-
tleman at the Foundation has just been tell-
ing us how the coolies steal every little piece
of metal, leftovers or screwed on, that they
can get at. The privation of life sets up an
entirely new set of standards for morals.
No one, it appears, can be convicted for
stealing food in China.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 273

PEKING, July 8.

The Rockefeller buildings are lovely sam-
ples of what money can do. In the midst
of this worn and weak city they stand out
like illuminating monuments of the splen-
dor of the past in proper combination with
the modern idea. They are in the finest old
style of Chinese architecture; green roofs
instead of yellow, with three stories instead
of one. One wonders how long it will take
China to catch up and know what they are
doing. It is said the Chinese are not at all
inclined to go to their hospital for fear of
the ultra foreign methods which they do not
yet understand. On the other hand, there
is no disposition on the part of the Institu-
tion to meet them half way as the mission-
aries have always done. There are a num-
ber of Chinese among the doctors and they
have now opened all the work to the women.

274 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

There is a great need for women doctors
now in China, but evidently it will take a
generation yet before this work will begin
to be understood and will take its natural
place in Chinese affairs. It is rather amus-
ing that this splendid set of buildings quite
surrounds and overshadows the biggest
Japanese hospital and school that is in Pe-
king, and they say the fact has quite humili-
ated the Japanese. At present the build-
ings are nearing completion, but all the old
rubbishy structures of former times will
have to be pulled down before these new
ones can be seen in all their beauty. Among
other things, they have built thirty-five
houses also in Chinese style but with all the
modern comforts, in which to house their
faculty, and in addition to those there are
a good many buildings which were taken
over from the old medical missionary Col-
lege, besides, perhaps, some that will be left
from the palace of the Prince whose prop-
erty they bought. Two fine old lions are an

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 275

addition from the Prince, but no foreign
family would stand the inconveniences and
discomforts of the ancient Prince, in spite
of all his wives.

276 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

PEKING, July 11.

They have the best melons here you ever
saw. Their watermelons, which are sold on
the street in such quantities as to put even
the southern negroes to shame, are just like
yellow ice cream in color, but they aren't as
juicy as ours. Their musk melons aren't
spicy like the ones at home at all, but are
shaped like pears, only bigger and have an
acid taste; in fact they are more like a cu-
cumber with a little acid pep in them, only
the seeds are all in the center like our
melons. When you get macaroons and little
cakes here in straight Chinese houses you
realize that neither we nor the Europeans
were the first to begin eating. They either
boil or steam their bread — they eat wheat
instead of rice in this part of the country—
or fry it, and I have no doubt that dough-
nuts were brought home to grandma by

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 277

some old seafaring captain. These things
are all the stranger because, except for
sponge cake, no such things are indigenous
to Japan. So when you first get here you
can hardly resist the impression that these
things have been brought to China from
America or Europe. Read a book called
"Two Heroes of Cathay," by Luella Miner,
and see how our country has treated some of
these people in the past, and then you see
them so fond of America and of Americans
and you realize that in some ways they are
ahead of us in what used to be known as
Christianity before the war. I guess we
wrote you from Hangchow about seeing the
monument and shrine to two Chinese offi-
cials who were torn in pieces at the time of
the Boxer rebellion because they changed a
telegram to the provincial officers "Kill all
foreigners" to read "Protect all foreign-
ers." The shrine is kept up, of course, by
the Chinese, and very few foreigners in
China even know of the incident.

278 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

Their art is really childlike and all the
new kinds of artists in America who think
being queer is being primitive ought to come
over here and study the Chinese in their
native abodes. A great love of bright colors
and a wonderful knowledge of how to com-
bine them, a comparatively few patterns
used over and over in all kinds of ways, and
a preference for designs that illustrate some
story or idea or that appeal to their sense of
the funny — it's a good deal more childlike
than what passes in Greenwich Village for
the childlike in art.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 279

Y. M. C. A., PEKING, July 17.

A young Korean arrived here in the even-
ing and he was met here on our porch by a
Chinese citizen who is also Korean. The
newly arrived could speak very little Eng-
lish and by means of a triangle we were able
to arrive at his story. It seems there is quite
a leakage of Korean students over the Chi-
nese border all the time. To become a
Chinese student requires six years of resi-
dence, or else it was three; anyway enough
to postpone the idea of going to America to
study till rather late in case one wants to
resort to that way of escape from Japanese
oppression. The elder and the one who has
become a Chinese citizen seemed a good deal
excited; I fancy they are dramatic by na-
ture, and made many gestures. He urged
on me the importance of our going to Korea
and he is going to bring us some pictures to

280 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

look at. Well, it all set me thinking, and so
I have been reading the Korean guide book
and reflecting on the wonderful climate
there and wondering if we can get a rea-
sonable place to stay. My first discovery
of the real seriousness of the Korean situa-
tion came across me in Japan early in
March, when we had a holiday on account
of the funeral of the Korean prince, for
the reason that after the funeral and grad-
ually in connection with it the Japanese
Advertiser said it was rumored that the old
Korean prince had committed suicide.
Doubtless you may know the story there,
and then again you may not. However,
the facts have leaked one way and another
and now it is known that the old man did
commit suicide in order to prevent the mar-
riage of the young prince, who has been
brought up in Japan, to the Japanese
princess. By etiquette his death, taking
place three days or so before the date set
for the wedding, prevented the marriage

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 281

from taking place for two years, and it is
hoped by the Koreans that before two years
they could weaken the Japanese grip on
Korea. We all know they have made a be-
ginning since last March and the suicide did
something to help that along. Now that
Japan is advertising political reforms in
Korea she would probably count on that
reputation again to cover her real activities
and intentions with the world at large for
some time to come. The Japanese are like
the Italian Padrones or other skillful newly
rich; they have learned the western efficiency
and in that they are at least a generation
ahead of their neighbors. New knowledge
to take advantage of the old experience
which she has moved away from and under-
stands so well, to make that experience con-
tribute all it has towards building up and
strengthening the new riches of herself.
The excuse is the one of the short and easy
road to success though in the long run it
is destructive in its bearings. But a certain

282 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

physical efficiency is what Japan surely has
and she has made that go a little further
than it really can go. It is just one more
evidence of the failure of the Peace Con-
ference to comprehend the excuses that
Wilson is making for the concessions he has
granted to the practical needs, as he calls
them. We are now getting the first echoes
from his speeches here.

When I reflect on the changed aspect of
our minds and on the facts that we have
become accustomed to gradually since com-
ing here I realize we have much to explain
to you which now seems a matter of course
over here. We discovered from reading an
old back number somewhere that an Ameri-
can traveler had been given the order of the
Royal Treasure in Japan when he was
there. This order is said to be bestowed on
the Japanese alone. Before he received it
he had made a public speech to the effect
that as China was down and out and needed
some protector it was natural that Japan

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 283

should be that, as by all historical reasons
she was fitted to be. It appears to be true
that the Militarists here who are causing the
trouble for China and who are able to hold
the government on account of foreign sup-
port have that idea so far as the "natural"
goes. The great man of China to-day is
Hsu, commonly known as Little Hsu, which
is a good nickname in English, Little Shoe.
He has never been in the western hemi-
sphere and he thinks it is better for China to
give a part of her territory to the Japanese
who will help them, than to hope for any-
thing from the other foreigners, who only
want to exploit them, and if once China can
get a stable government with the aid of the
Japanese militarists, then after that she can
build herself into a nation. Meantime Lit-
tle Shoe has gained by a sad fluke in the
legislature the appointment of Military
Dictator of Mongolia, and this means he is
given full power to use his army for agri-
cultural and any other enterprises he may

284 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

choose. It means, in short, tHat he is abso-
lute dictator of all Mongolia which is re-
tained by China and which is bordered by
Eastern Inner Mongolia which Japan con-
trols under the twenty-one Demands by a
ninety-nine-year lease under the same abso-
lute conditions. These last few days since
that act was consummated, nothing is hap-
pening so far as the public knows, and ac-
cording to friends the government can go
on indefinitely here with no cabinet and no
responsibility to react to the public de-
mands. The bulk of the nation is against
this state of affairs, but with the support of
foreigners and the lack of organization there
is nothing to do but stand it arid see the
nation sold out to Japan and other grabbers.
If you can get at Millard's Review, look
at it and read especially the recent act of the
Foreign Council which licensed the press
— I mean they passed an Act to do so. For-
tunately the Act is not legal and will not be
ratified by the Chinese Council at Shanghai.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 285

To this house come the officers of the Y.
M. C. A. who are on the way home from
Siberia and other places. The stories one
hears here are full of horror and always the
same. Our men are too few to accomplish
anything and the whole affair is not any of
our business anyway. Anyway the Cana-
dians have a sense of virtue in getting out of
it and going home, and well they may, say I.
The Japanese have had 70,000 there at least
and they may have shipped many more than
that, for they have such a command of the
railroads that there is no way of keeping
track of them. I believe the conviction is
they are taking in men according to their
own judgment of the case all the time.
Everybody agrees that the Japanese sol-
diers are hated by all the others and have
generally proved themselves disagreeable,
the Chinese being thoroughly liked.

Meantime the dissatisfaction in Japan
over rice in particular and food in general
is quite evidently becoming more and more

286 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

acute. And it is interesting to read the in-
terviews with Count Ishii which all end up
in the same way, that the fear of Bomb-
throwers in the United States is becoming a
very serious alarm among all. The Anti-
American agitation was hard for us to un-
derstand while we were there, but its mean-
ing is less obscure now. Will it be effective?
Is another world war already preparing?
It is said here that the students were very
successful during the strike in converting
soldiers to their ideas. The boys at the High
Normal said they were disappointed when
they were let out of jail at the University
because they had not converted more than
half the soldiers. The guards around those
boys were changed every four hours.

It is raining most of the time and it is
typical of the Chinese character that my
teacher did not come because of the rain.
You have to remember he never takes a
'ricksha, though he might have looked at it
that it was better to pay a man than to lose

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 287

the lesson. The mud in the roads here is
much like the old days on Long Island
before the gravel was put there, only it is
softer and more slippery here, and the water
stands.

288 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

PEKING, July 17.

We are pleased to learn that the Japan-
ese censor hasn't detained all our letters,
though since you call them incoherent there
must be some gaps. I'm sure we never
write anything incoherent if you get it all.
The course of events has Been a trifle in-
coherent if you don't sit up and hold its
hands all the time. Since China didn't sign
the peace treaty things have quite settled
down here, however, and the lack of excite-
ment after living on aerated news for a
couple of months is quite a letdown. How-
ever, we live in hopes of revolution or a coup
d'etat or some other little incident to liven
up the dog days.

You will be pleased to know that the
University Chancellor — see letters of early
May — has finally announced that he will re-
turn to the University. It is supposed that

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 289

the Government has assented to his condi-
tions, among which is that the police won't
interfere with the students, but will leave
discipline to the University authorities. To
resign and run away in order to be coaxed
back is an art. It's too bad Wilson never
studied it. The Chinese peace delegates re-
ported back here that Lloyd George in-
quired what the twenty-one Demands were,
as he had never heard of them. However,
the Chinese hold Balfour as most respon-
sible. In order to avoid any incoherence I
will add that a Chinese servant informed a
small boy in the household of one of our
friends here that the Chinese are much more
cleanly than the foreigners, for they have
people come to them to clean their ears and
said cleaners go way down in. This is an
unanswerable argument.

I hear your mother downstairs engaged
on the fascinating task of trying to make
Chinese tones. I may tell you that there
are only four hundred spoken words in

290 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

Chinese, all monosyllables. But each one of
these is spoken in a different tone, there
being four tones in this part of the country
and increasing as you go south till in Canton
there are twelve or more. In writing there
are only 214 radicals, which are then com-
bined and mixed up in all sorts of ways.
My last name here is Du, my given name is
Wei. The Du is made up of two characters,
one of which means tree and the other earth.
They are written separately. Then Wei is
made up of some more characters mixed up
together, one character for woman and one
for dart, and I don't know what else. Don't
ask me how they decided that earth and tree
put together made Du, for I can't tell.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 291

PEKING, July 19.

I met the tutor, the English tutor, of the
young Manchu Emperor, the other day — he
has three Chinese tutors besides. He teaches
him Math., Sciences, etc., besides English,
which he has been doing for three months.
It is characteristic of the Chinese that they
not only didn't kill any of the royal family,
but they left them one of the palaces in the
Imperial City and an income of four million
dollars Mex. a year, and within this palace
the kid who is now thirteen is still Emperor,
is called that, and is waited upon by the
eunuch attendants who crawl before him on
their hands and knees. At the same time he
is, of course, practically a prisoner, being
allowed to see his father and his younger
Brother once a month. Otherwise he has no
children to play with at all. There is some
romance left in China after all if you want

292 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

to let your imagination play about this
scene. The tutors don't kneel, although they
address him as Your Majesty, or whatever
it is in Chinese, and they walk in and he
remains standing until the tutor is seated.
This is the old custom, which shows the
reverence in which even the old Tartars
must have held education and learning. He
has a Chinese garden in which to walk, but
no place to ride or for sports. The tutor is
trying to get the authorities to send him to
the country, let him have playmates and
sports, and also abolish the eunuch — but he
seems to think they will more likely abolish
him. The kid is quite bright, reads all the
newspapers and is much interested in poli-
tics, keeps track of the Paris Conference,
knows about the politicians in all the coun-
tries, and in short knows a good deal more
about world politics than most boys of his
age; also he is a good classical Chinese
scholar. The Chinese don't seem to worry
at all about the boy's becoming the center of

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 293

intrigue and plots, but I imagine they sort
of keep him in reserve with the idea that
unless the people want monarchy back he
never can do anything, while if they do let
him back it will be the will of heaven.

I am afraid I haven't sufficiently im-
pressed it upon you that this is the rainy
season. It was impressed upon us yester-
day afternoon, when the side street upon
which we live was a flowing river a foot and
a half deep. The main street on which the
Y. M. C. A. building is situated was a solid
lake from housewall to housewall, though
not more than six inches or so. But the
street is considerably wider than Broadway,
so it was something of a sight. Peking has
for many hundred years had sewers big
enough for a man to stand up in, but they
don't carry fast enough. Probably about
this time you will be reading cables from
some part of China about floods and the
number of homeless. The Yellow River
is known as the curse of China, so much

294 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

damage is done. We were told that when
the missionaries went down to do flood relief
work a year or so ago, they were so busy
that they didn't have time to preach, and
they did so much good that when they were
through they had to put up the bars to keep
the Chinese from joining the churches en
masse. We haven't heard, however, that
they took the hint as to the best way of
doing business. These floods go back
largely if not wholly to the policy of the
Chinese in stripping the forests. If you
were to see the big coffins they are buried
in and realize the large part of China's scant
forests that must go into coffins you would
favor a law that no man could die until he
had planted a tree for his coffin and one
extra.

One of our new friends here is quite an
important politician, though quite out of it
just now. He told a story last night
which tickled the Chinese greatly. The
Japanese minister here haunted the Presi-

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 295

dent and Prime Minister while the peace
negotiations were on, and every day on the
strength of what they told him cabled the
Tokyo government that the Chinese dele-
gates were surely going to sign. Now he is
in a somewhat uncomfortable position mak-
ing explanations to the home government.
He sent a representative after they didn't
sign to the above-mentioned friend to ask
him whether the government had been fool-
ing him all the time. He replied No, but
that the Japanese should remember that
there was one power greater than the gov-
ernment, namely, the people, and that the
delegates had obeyed the people. The Jap-
anese will never be able to make up their
minds though whether they were being de-
liberately deceived or not. The worst of the
whole thing, however, is that even intelli-
gent Chinese are relying upon war between
the United States and Japan, and when
they find out that the United States won't
go to war just on China's account, there

296 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

will be some kind of a revulsion. But if
the United States had used its power when
the war closed to compel disarmament and
get some kind of a just settlement, there
would be no limit to its influence over here.
As it is, they infer that the moral is that
Might Controls, and that adds enormously
to the moral power of Japan as against the
United States. It is even plainer here than
at home that if the United States wasn't
going to see its "ideals" through, it
shouldn't have professed any, but if it did
profess them it ought to have made good on
'em even if we had to fight the whole world.
However, our financial pressure, and the
threat of withholding food and raw ma-
terials would have enabled Wilson to put
anything over.

Another little incident is connected with
the Chancellor of the University. Although
he is not a politician at all, the Militarist
party holds him responsible for their recent
trials and the student outbreaks. So, al-

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 297

though it announced that the Chancellor
is coming back, the Anfu Club, the parlia-
mentary organization of the militarists, is
still trying to keep him out. The other night
they gave a banquet to some University stu-
dents and bribed them to start something.
At the end they gave each one dollar extra
for 'ricksha hire the next day, so there would
be no excuse for not going to the meeting
at the University. Fifteen turned up, but
the spies on the other side heard something
was going on and they rang the bell, col-
lected about a hundred and locked the
bribees in. .Then they kept them in till they
confessed the whole story (and put their
names to a written confession) and turned
over their resolutions and mimeographed
papers which had been prepared for them
in which they said they were really the ma-
jority of the students and did not want the
Chancellor back, and that a noisy minority
had imposed on the public, etc. The next
day the Anfu papers told about an awful

298 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

riot at the University, and how a certain
person had instigated and led it, although
he hadn't been at the University at all that
day.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 299

PEKING, July 24.

We expect to go to Manchuria, probably
in September, and in October to Shansi,
which is quite celebrated now because they
have a civil governor who properly devotes
himself to his job, and they are said to have
sixty per cent or more of the children in
school and to be prepared for compulsory
education in 1920. It is the ease with which
the Chinese do these things without any for-
eign assistance which makes you feel so
hopeful for China on the one hand, and
so disgusted on the other that they put
up so patiently with inefficiency and graft
most of the time. There seems to be a
general impression that the present situa-
tion cannot continue indefinitely, but must
take a turn one way or another. The stu-
dent agitation has died down as an active
political thing but continues intellectually.

300 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

In Tientsin, for example, they publish sev-
eral daily newspapers which sell for a cop-
per apiece. A number of students have
been arrested in Shantung lately by the
Japanese, so I suppose the students are
actively busy there. I fancy that when va-
cation began there was quite an exodus in
that direction.

I am told that X , our Japanese

friend, is much disgusted with the Chinese
about the Shantung business — that Japan
has promised to return Shantung, etc., and
that Japan can't do it until China gets a
stable government to take care of things, be-
cause their present governments are so weak
that China would simply give away her terri-
tory to some other power, and that the Chi-
nese instead of attacking the Japanese ought
to mind their own business and set their own
house in order. There is enough truth in this
so that it isn't surprising that so intelligent

and liberal a person as X is taken in by

it. But what such Japanese as he cannot

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 301

realize, because the truth is never told to
them, is how responsible the Japanese gov-
ernment is for fostering a weak and unrep-
resentative government here, and what a
temptation to it a weak and divided China
will continue to be, for it will serve indefi-
nitely as an excuse for postponing the re-
turn of Shantung — as well as for interfer-
ing elsewhere. Anyone who knows the least
thing about not only general disturbances
in China but special causes of friction be-
tween China and Japan, can foresee that
there will continue to be a series of plausible
excuses for postponing the return promised
— and anyway, as a matter of fact, what she
has actually promised to return compared
with the rights she would keep in her pos-
session amount to little or nothing. Just
this last week there was a clash in Man-
churia and fifteen or twenty Japanese sol-
diers are reported killed by Chinese — there
will always be incidents of that kind which
will have to be settled first. If the other

302 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

countries would only surrender their special
concessions to the keeping of an interna-
tional guarantee, they could force the hand
of Japan, hut I can't see Great Britain giv-
ing up Hong Kong. On the whole, how-
ever, Great Britain, next to us, and barring
the opium business, has been the most decent
of all the great powers in dealing with
China. I started out with a prejudice to
the contrary, and have been surprised to
learn how little grabbing England has
actually done here. Of course, India is the
only thing she really cares about and her
whole policy here is controlled by that con-
sideration, with such incidental trade ad-
vantages as she can pick up.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 303

'(Later) July 27.

I think I wrote a while back about a
little kid five years old or so who walked
up the middle aisle at one of my lectures
and stood for about fifteen minutes quite
close to me, gazing at me most seriously and
also wholly unembarrassed. Night before
last we went to a Chinese restaurant for
dinner, under the guardianship of a friend
here. A little boy came into our coop and
began most earnestly addressing me in Chi-
nese. Our friend found out that he was
asking me if I knew his third uncle. He
was the kid of the lecture who had recog-
nized me as the lecturer, and whose third
uncle is now studying at Columbia. If you

meet Mr. T congratulate him for me on

his third nephew. The boy made us several
calls during the evening, all equally serious
and unconstrained. At one he asked me for

304 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN ,|

my card, which he carefully wrapped up in
ceremonial paper. The restaurant is near
a lotus pond and they are now in their full-
est bloom. I won't describe them beyond
saying that the lotus is the lotus and advis-
ing you to come out next summer and see
them.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 305

PEKING, August 4.

I went to Tientsin to an educational con-
ference for two days last week. It was called
by the Commissioner of this Province for all
the principals of the higher schools to dis-
cuss the questions connected with the open-
ing of the schools in the fall. Most of the
heads of schools are very conservative and
were much opposed to the students' strikes,
and also to the students' participation in
politics. They are very nervous and timor-
ous about the opening of the schools, for
they think that the students after engaging
in politics all summer won't lend themselves
readily to school discipline — their high
schools, etc., are all boarding schools — and
will want to run the schools after having run
the government for several months. The
liberal minority, while they want the stu-

306 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

dents to settle down to school work, think
that the students' experiences will have been
of great educational value and that they will
come back with a new social viewpoint, and
the teaching ought to be changed — and also
the methods of school discipline — to meet
the new situation.

I had a wonderful Chinese lunch at a pri-
vate high school one day there. The school
was started about fifteen years ago in a pri-
vate house with six pupils; now they have
twenty acres of land, eleven hundred pupils,
and are putting up a first college building
to open a freshman class of a hundred this
fall — it's of high school grade now, all Chi-
nese support and management, and non-
missionary or Christian, although the prin-
cipal is an active Christian and thinks
Christ's teachings the only salvation for
China. The chief patron is a non-English
speaking, non-Christian scholar of the old
type — but with modern ideas. The princi-
pal said that when three of them two years

LETTKRS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 307

ago went around the world on an educa-
tional trip, this old scholar among them, the
United States Government gave them a
special secret service detective from New
York to San Francisco, and this man was
so impressed with the old Chinese gentleman
that he said: "What kind of education can
produce such a man as that, the finest gen-
tleman I ever saw. You western educated
gentlemen are spoiled in comparison with
him." They certainly have the world beat
in courtesy of manners — as much polite-
ness as the Japanese but with much less
manner, so it seems more natural. How-
ever, this type is not very common. I asked
the principal what the effect of the mission-
ary teaching was on the Chinese passivity
and non-resistance. He said it differed very
much as between Americans and English
and among Americans between the older
and the younger lot. The latter, especially
the Y. M. C. A., Have given up the non-
interventionalist point of view and take the

308 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

ground that Christianity ought to change
social conditions. The Y. M. C. A. is, he
says, a group of social workers rather than
of missionaries in the old-fashioned sense —
all of which is quite encouraging. Perhaps
the Chinese will be the ones to rejuvenate
Christianity by dropping its rot, wet and
dry, and changing it into a social religion.
The principal is a Teachers College man
and one of the most influential educators in
China. He speaks largely in picturesque
metaphor, and I'm sorry I can't remember
what he said. Among other things, in
speaking of the energy of the Japanese and
the inertia of the Chinese, he said the former
were mercury, affected by every change
about them, and the latter cotton wool that
the heat didn't warm and cold didn't freeze.
He confirmed my growing idea, however,
that the conservatism of the Chinese was
much more intellectual and deliberate, and
less mere routine clinging to custom, than
I used to suppose. Consequently, when

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 309

their ideas do change, the people will change
more thoroughly, more all the way through,
than the Japanese.

It seems that the present acting Minister
of Education was allowed to take office under
three conditions — that he should dissolve the
University, prevent the Chancellor from re-
turning, and dismiss all the present heads
of the higher schools here. He hasn't been
able, of course, to accomplish one, and the
Anfu Club is correspondingly sore. He is
said to be a slick politician, and when he has
been at dinner with our liberal friends he
tells them how even he is calumniated — peo-
ple say that he is a member of the Anfu
Club.

I struck another side of China on my way
home from Tientsin. I was introduced to
an ex-Minister of Finance as my traveling
companion. He is a Ph.D. in higher math,
from America, and is a most intelligent
man. But his theme of conversation was
the need of a scientific investigation of

310 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

spirits and spirit possession and divination,
etc., in order to decide scientifically the ex-
istence of the soul and an overruling mind.
Incidentally he told a fine lot of Chinese
ghost stories. Aside from the coloring of
the tales I don't know that there was any-
thing especially Chinese about them. He
certainly is much more intelligent about it
than some of our American spiritualists.
But the ghosts were certainly Chinese all
right — spirit possession mostly. I suppose
you know that the walls that stand in front
of the better-to-do Chinese houses are there
to keep spirits out — the spirits can't turn a
corner, so when the wall is squarely in front
of the location of the front door the house
is safe. Otherwise they come in and take
possession of somebody — if they aren't
comfortable as they are. It seems there is
quite a group of ex-politicians in Tientsin
who are much interested in psychical re-
search. Considering that China is the
aboriginal home of ghosts, I can't see why

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 311

the western investigators don't start their
research here. These educated Chinese
aren't credulous, so there is nothing crude
about their ghost stories.

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